JOHN RUSKIN 







JOHN RUSKIN, 1881. 

HY PROFESSOR HUBERT HERKOMER, R.A. 
{By permission of the Artist.) 



(See p. igi.) 



JOHN RUSKIN 



A Sketch of His Life, His Work, and His Opinions 
With Personal Reminiscences 



BY 

M. H/SPIELM ANN 

AUTHOR OF HENRIETTE RONNER, THE 
WORKS OF G. F. WATTS, R.A., ETC. 
EDITOR OF THE MAGAZINE OF ART 



TOGETHER WITH 
A PAPER BY JOHN RUSKIN, ENTITLED 

THE BLACK ARTS 

AND A NOTE ON RUSKIN BY HARRISON S. MORRIS, MANAGING 
DIRECTOR ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

ILLUSTRATED 




PHILADELPHIA 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

MDCCCC 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Ubrary of Cong,, 
Office of | 

FEB 5 - 1900 

KegUter of Copyrlgfatfe 



a L 



54 

Copyright, 19CX), 

BY 

J. B. LiPPiNCOTT Company. 



SECwiO copy, 









Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. 



}6loifl*' 



/«/? 



I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 



MY WIFE. 



A NOTE ON RUSKIN. 



The dying century for which he has laboured 
so valiantly marks the death of John Ruskin. 

On Saturday, the twentieth of January, 
1900, he passed into the brightness of that 
day whose herald he has been, and his many 
books alone shall henceforth speak for him. 
He saw the light and caught the sounds from 
beyond our ken. He was the pilot of our 
race, leading the way into the realm of beauty 
that alone is truth. We gave him little heed ; 
we flouted his noble words ; we laughed at his 
whims and worries ; we pressed forward with 
steam and sordid desire in his despite. But 

as surely as the odour from a flower steals 

(5) 



6 JOHN RUSKIN. 

out and purifies the air, as irresistibly as the 
brook runs into the unacknowledging sea, so do 
his opinions, his ethics, his very syllables, enter 
and take -part in our existence. We cannot 
silence them with jeers, for they are as silent 
in their influence as an odour, nor can we stifle 
them with ignorance. Each author, journalist, 
versifier, preacher, uses unheedingly a speech 
made purer by this master of our tongue, and 
each must utter the code, in whatsoever form, 
which the purer lips and richer brain have 
made a part of our unconscious thought. 

It is the mission of such a soul as John 
Ruskin's to deal with contemporary things 
rather than with elemental ones. He was 
born a lofty antagonist of besetting ills. He 
saw, indeed, the deeper purport of events, 
and spoke with profound meaning of them; 
the heights of erudition were early conquered, 
and the meaning and purpose of life and death 
were clear. But, instead of touching a creative 
chord, these thrilled to the dragon at the 



JOHN R US KIN. 7 

gates, and he fought like a hero with the 
foe. 

Such a contest demands the qualities which 
uplift a people ; but when the knightly lance 
is forever at rest, the hero is a memory. His 
work is over ; it is history, and its interest for 
the generations is the interest of history, and 
not the interest of living and elemental force. 

Ruskin's work is over. He lies with his great 
ancestors in the English valhalla of thought, with 
Bacon and Jeremy Taylor and Burke, with 
Coleridge and Haydon and Carlyle. The 
good he achieved is the world's, and the world 
will hold him in blessed remembrance while 
beauty rests in the open landscape or rises 
into forms of stone that shall endure. 

His own volumes are his best exponents. 
They are the ripeness of his gleanings. They 
give the man's thought and mental stature ; 
but they omit the man. In the pages that 
follow some of the personal threads of his 
great career are woven into a likeness of 
him, and the reader who has drunk at his 



8 JOHN RUSKIN. 

" well of English undefiled " will find here 
matter with which to realize the person who 
animates the books. 

Harrison S. Morris. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

This book is intended to present a brief out- 
line of the life and opinions of the " Sage of 
Coniston," together with some account of his 
personality, which I have had the opportunity 
of gaining a knowledge of in his company and 
in that of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn ; as 
well as by the study of his writings and by in- 
quiry into the impressions made by Ruskin 
upon some of the chief writers of the day. 

I have also included the recital of certain 
facts and correspondence that arose out of our 
intercourse, deeming them interesting enough 
to be placed on record, not otherwise, perhaps, 
preservable. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

Introduction 15 

His Life 17 

Character, Health, and Temperament 40 

Author, Bookman, and Stylist 67 

The Artist 73 

The Teacher 80 

The Educationist 92 

His View of Things 96 

The Letter-Writer 103 

The Poet ... 109 

Ruskin and George Cruikshank 115 

Brantwood 125 

"The Angel in the House" 145 

Home-Life at Coniston 157 

The Portraits of Ruskin 165 

" The Black Arts." By John Ruskin 199 

Epilogue 218 



INDEX ... 



II 



ILLUSTRATIONS, 



PAGB 

I. — John Ruskin, 1881. By Prof. Herkomer, R.A. Frontispiece 
2. — „ 1822. By. James Northcote, R.A. ... 19 

3.— „ 1824. „ „ ... 23 

4. — Christchurch College, Oxford; showing Ruskin's 

Rooms 27 

5. — The Ruskin Drawing School, Oxford 35 

6. — John Ruskin, 1842. By George Richmond, R.A. ... 47 
7. — „ 1853. At Glenfinlas Waterfall. By 

Sir J. Millais, Br., R.A. ... ... 61 

8. — A Page of One of Ruskin's Note-books, for "The 

Stones of Venice " 77 

9. — Cathedral Spire, Rouen. By John Ruskin 81 

10. — John Ruskin, 1857. By George Richmond, R.A. ... 85 
11. — „ 1866. From a Photograph by Elliott 

and Fry 97 

12. — John Ruskin, 1876. By Georges Pilotelle in 

13. — BrantwoOd from Coniston Lake. By Arthur Sev- 
ern, R.I 127 

14. — John Ruskin, 1877. From the Bust by Benjamin 

Creswick '. 131 

15.— Ruskin's Study at Brantwood. By Arthur Sev- 
ern, R.I 135 

16. — Ruskin's Bedroom, Brantwood 141 

17. — Mrs. Arthur Severn. By Joseph Severn 149 

18. — John Ruskin, 1880. From the Bust by Sir Edgar 

Boehm, Bt., R.A 153 

19.— John Ruskin, 1882. From a Photograph by Bar- 

raud 167 

20.— John Ruskin, 1884. From the Bust by Conrad 

Dressler 183 

2 13 



14 ILL USTRA TIONS. 

2I.~John Ruskin, 1886. From a Photograph by Bar- 

raud 195 

22. — Facsimile of Letter by John Ruskin ... ... ... 201 

23— » » 205 

24— » „ 209 



Note.— The illustrations are here published by special permission or arrange- 
ment : that by Sir John Millais, by courteous permission of Sir Henry Acland, the 
owner of the copyright ; and the page of Ruskin's notebook, and the drawing of 
Rouen Spire, by consent of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn. 



JOHN RUSKIN. 



INTRODUCTION. 

'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand 
Where he in English earth is laid, 
And from his ashes may be made 

The violet of his native land. 

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head 
That sleeps, or wears the mask of sleep, 
And come, whatever loves to weep, 

And hear the ritual of the dead. 

Since Tennyson died no greater loss has been 
sustained by English literature in the memory 
of the present generation than that of John 
Ruskin. Of all men who have dominated 
the Art-world of Britain during the nine- 
teenth century, Ruskin is beyond all question 
and beyond all comparison the greatest, and, 
by universal admission, the most individual and 
most interesting. What his exact position as 
a critic and preacher of Art may be, what his 
rank as a scientist or a leader of thought, I 
make no pretence here of determining. But 

IS 



16 JOHN RUSKIN. 

by common consent, he has been the most dis- 
tinguished figure in the arena of Art-philosophy 
for half-a-century and more, the philanthropist- 
militant par_ excellence. He is the man who has 
admittedly moulded the taste of the public to a 
preponderating extent in matters aesthetic, and, 
apart from his labours outside the pale of Art 
has exerted an influence so powerful that he has 
given a direction to the practice of painting and 
architecture that may still be traced in some of 
the happiest productions of the day. His death 
has given reason for mourning to many; no 
one has more eloquently, more passionately, 
pleaded the cause of the poor than Ruskin — no 
one (except it be perhaps Mr. Gladstone, his 
political bete noire) could boast so vast a num- 
ber of friends amongst the great mass of the 
public. No one was more frequently appealed 
to for advice, nor to better or kindlier pur- 
pose. None, indeed, has loved his country 
better, or more loyally striven to serve her. 
And, in the general regret, few will be found 
so blind or rancorous as to remember aught 
but the conscientious labours of his life, the 
nobility of his sturdy efforts, and the sacrifices 
that he made for public and for private good. 



CHAPTER I. 

HIS LIFE. 

The outline of his life is briefly this. He 
was born in London, at 54, Hunter Street, 
Brunswick Square, on February 8, 18 19. His 
father (his mother's cousin) was a Scotsman, 
bringing his "good and extremely strong wilV , 
as the son tells us, into the firm of wine mer- 
chants known as "Ruskin, Telford, and 
Domecq " (agents for Peter Domecq, the great 
sherry-grower of Xerez), and to such good 
purpose that he speedily became a successful 
and a wealthy man. John Ruskin, the son, 
was an only child, and for several years he 
was entirely without companions of his own 
age, with hardly an amusement or boyish joy, 
save such few as were allowed him by his 
austere mother and austerer aunt, and " accus- 
tomed to no other prospect than that of the 
brick walls over the way." Always an ex- 
tremely sensitive and nervous child, he became 
studious, thoughtful, and observant, but lively 
and impressionable withal ; so that when the 
"first event of his life" took place — no less 
an occasion than being taken by his eminently 

b 2* 17 



18 JOHN RUSKIN. 

disagreeable nurse to the brow of Friar's Craig, 
or Derwentwater — the intense joy and awe he 
felt sank so deeply into his soul that the love 
of landscape became henceforth and for always 
his prevailing passion. In the conduct of his 
business Mr. Ruskin senior was constrained to 
drive throughout the length and breadth of 
England, travelling with post-chaise and pair ; 
and as soon as his son was old enough he 
carried him with him during the holidays, and 
never missed showing to him all the beautiful 
views, the cathedrals, castles, ruins, and picture- 
galleries, public and private, near which their 
course might lay. It was thus that the boy's 
love of scenery and of art was first nurtured 
and developed. He had already begun, at 
the age of eight, to sing the praises of land- 
scape in precocious verse ; and his father — a 
highly intellectual and cultivated man, and no 
mean artist himself — gladly recognised his 
tendency, and encouraged his passion by 
placing him for instruction under J. D. Harding 
and Copley Fielding. By those eminent but 
somewhat conventional water-colour painters — 
then reckoned amongst the best teachers of 
the day — his remarkable executive skill was 
formed, while his ordinary education he re- 
ceived first from members of his own family, 
and then from the testy, but kind-hearted, 
Canon Dale and other private tutors. 




JOHN RUSKIN, 1822. 

FROM THE OIL PAINTING BY JAMES NORTHCOTE, R.A. 
{By permission of Arthur Severn, Esq., R.I.) 

(See / J jo.) 



HIS LIFE. 21 

It was in 1835, at the age of sixteen, that 
Ruskin made his first appearance in the public 
press by contributing a series of geological 
articles, with illustrations by himself, to the 
Magazine of Natural History. Later on, 
under the pseudonym of " Kata Phusin " 
("According to Nature"), he printed other 
papers on Art and Architecture in Loudon's 
Architectural Magazine which in 1892 were 
republished in sumptuous garb under the title 
of "The Poetry of Architecture." He was 
but eighteen when he wrote this book. In 
later years he excused the anonymity he had 
preserved in respect to it by pleading that 
the public would hardly have felt inclined 
to accept such frank dogmatism from one 
so young. When I reminded Mr. Burne- 
Jones of this candid excuse, the artist re- 
plied with smiling surprise: "When, then, 
should one be dogmatic if not at the age of 
eighteen ? " 

Having entered Christchurch, Oxford, as a 
gentleman commoner, he began at once his 
friendship with his contemporary Dr. (now Sir 
Henry) Acland — half-a-century afterwards the 
indirect and unoffending cause, I believe, of his 
resignation of the Slade Professorship at the 
University. From Dr. Buckland he acquired 
that profound geological knowledge which has 



22 JOHN RUSK IN. 

always been one of the mainstays of Ruskin's 
writings on Art or Science, and of inestimable 
service to him later, whether as critic, painter, 
lecturer, or disputant. It may also be said that 
to Mr. W7H. Harrison Ruskin owed much that 
was not inborn of the elegance and purity of 
his literary style ; just as from the Rev. Osborne 
Gordon he acquired the greater part of his 
general scholarship. In 1839 ne gained the 
Newdigate Prize, with his poem "Salsette and 
Elephanta," which has since been reprinted ; 
and he graduated B.A. in 1842. It was in that 
year that he wrote in support and defence of 
Turner, who, now eight-and-sixty years of age, 
old and alone, slighted and misunderstood by 
the public, was being savagely written down by 
nearly all the critics, who could neither appre- 
ciate his beauties nor excuse his faults. In 
1843, when twenty-four years old, and three 
years after his introduction to Turner, Ruskin 
expanded this explosion, penned " in the height 
of black anger," into what is known as the first 
volume of " Modern Painters : By a Graduate 
of Oxford." This, without doubt, was the 
central event of Ruskin's life, eventful and 
contentious as it has ever been. 

The sensation which the book created in 
artistic circles has rarely been equalled before 
or since. Its reception was tremendous, and 



HIS LIFE. 25 

the violence and bitterness with which the 
unknown author was attacked by the critics 
were drowned only by the rapturous storm of 
applause that arose from the Art-public at 
large, who accepted with enthusiasm the bril- 
liance and fire of his writing, and the force 
and genius of his powerful reasoning. The 
immediate effect of the work was to establish 
Turner's reputation, firmly and for ever, as the 
greatest landscape-painter the world has ever 
seen, and his own as perhaps the greatest of 
modern English prose-writers. Four more 
volumes completed the work, but the last was 
not published until i860 — after nearly twenty- 
years of laborious preparation, passed in inces- 
sant study and travelling, mainly in Switzerland 
and Italy, had been devoted to the task. Mr. 
Hamerton, in his " Intellectual Life," points 
out with truth how, in common with the Hum- 
boldts, Ruskin affords a striking example of the 
value of wealth to an intellectual career. Had 
it not been for his material prosperity, all his 
genius, force of resolution and resistance to 
every temptation to indolence would not have 
sufficed to enable him to carry through the 
work of seventeen years' study and expensive 
preparation. As Mr. Hamerton says, " Modern 
Painters " is not merely a work of genius, but 
of genius seconded by wealth. 
b 3 



26 JOHN RUSK IN. 

In the meantime he had been busy with 
other writings. In 1847 he contributed his 
first review to the Quarterly — his text being 
Lord Lindsay's " History of Christian Art." 
Two years later — having been brought, during 
his preparation of " Modern Painters," to turn 
his attention to the Queen of the Arts — he 
published his " Seven Lamps of Architecture," 
in which he sets forth the theory how in a 
nation's dominant style of architecture may be 
seen reflected its life and manners, and even 
its passions and its religion. Following on the 
lines thus laid down, Ruskin proceeded, in 
"The Stones of Venice," issued in 1851 and 
1853, to tell the history of the rise and fall of 
Venice, as illustrated by her buildings, and to 
show how the prosperity and art of a nation 
are synchronous and interdependent, and how 
the purity of national art and of the national 
conscience and morals act and re-act each upon 
the other. 

It was at IKiiT time, while Ruskin was 
astonishing the world with his originality and 
startling it with his eager sincerity, that the 
society then termed and since known as the 
"Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood" sprang into 
being. A brilliant band of youthful enthusiasts 
— comprising John Everett Millais, W. Holman 
Hunt, W. M. Rossetti, Frederick G. Stephens, 



HIS LIFE. 29 

James Collinson, Thomas Woolner, and Dante 
Gabriel Rossetti — combined with the avowed 
object of founding a school of painting of which 
absolute truth to nature in all things, especially 
in respect to detail, was to be the fundamental 
principle ; a path of material truth from which 
Raphael was held to have been the first to stray, 
and which, by a sort of tacit consent, had been 
untrodden by all others since his day. An 
object and mission so worthy were precisely 
such as would enlist the sympathies and fire 
the generous and chivalrous nature of Ruskin, 
encouraged and directed as he was by the 
advice of Dyce. He straightway threw himself 
heart and soul into the fray, first by his 
celebrated letter to the Times, and afterwards 
by his " Pre-Raphaelitism," and other writings, 
whereby he not only succeeded in securing a 
fair hearing and judgment for the harassed and 
persecuted exponents of the creed, but in 
educating the public into an appreciation of their 
works. He came, in fact, to be regarded as 
the prophet of the school, and his doughty 
championship constitutes one of the stormiest 
passages of his disputatious life. His chief, or 
most obvious, reward was the ridicule of the 
world, or such part of it as he especially ad- 
dressed himself to. The general sentiment 
aroused was fairly reflected by the well-known 



30 JOHN RUSKIN. 

amusing cartoon by Mr. Frederick Sandys — 
himself, by the way, by no means out of sympathy 
with the teaching of the school. In this clever 
parody of Sir John Millais's " Sir Isumbras at 
the Ford," which was then the sensation of the 
Academy," Mr. Sandys humorously represented 
Ruskin as the ass of burden of the P.-R.B., on 
whose back Millais, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti 
were carried across the stream of shallow 
waters. 

In i860 Ruskin, who had by this time 
become a power in the land, threw himself 
into a new crusade. Truth, purity of motive, 
and honesty of execution, which he had so long 
and so fervently preached as essentials, not only 
to the highest, but to all sincere art, he now 
came to consider in relation to social science, 
and he began a series of papers entitled " Unto 
this Last," which he contributed to the Comhill 
Magazine. Their tendency and effect may 
easily be imagined. They waged war — with all 
the bitterness and all the torrentuous eloquence 
of a prophet of old — against the whole world 
of commerce and its methods, and assailed 
the stronghold of the political economists 
with the fiery vigour of which John Ruskin, 
in these latter days, has almost alone been 
possessed. His principles and views, however, 
being based upon quite the highest interpre- 



HIS LIFE. 31 

tation and application of an ethical morality 
such as his master, Carlyle, had preached 
before him, were rejected with anger and con- 
tempt by the commercial community. So 
strongly, indeed, did they resent his Utopian 
philosophy that the editor (who at that time 
was Thackeray), fearful for the fate of his maga- 
zine, which was threatened with serious injury 
by the publication of the obnoxious articles, put 
a summary stoppage to their further issue. It 
was, however, one of the crowning and closing 
glories of Ruskin's life — at once his delight and 
consolation — that in more recent times thinkers 
have come to accept many of his theories and 
contentions once spurned or rejected, and the 
public to receive them as truths. 

In 1865 and 1866 appeared "Sesame and 
Lilies " and " Crown of Wild Olive," the most 
popular of Ruskin's books in England and 
America alike (if sales may be taken as a 
criterion) and, perhaps, his masterpieces of 
prose-writing. In 1867 he was elected Rede 
Lecturer at Cambridge, with the honorary 
degree of LL.D. ; but so far back as 1853 he 
had made his debut as a lecturer, when he 
addressed the Edinburgh students on " Gothic 
Architecture." Moreover he, with Dante 
Gabriel Rossetti and F. D. Maurice, had taken 
vast interest of the teaching sort in the 



32 JOHN RUSKIh. 

Working Men's College in 1865. In 1870 
he was appointed Professor of Fine Art at 
Oxford, to the chair founded in the previous 
year by Mr. Felix Slade. He was at Verona 
when he_ received the invitation, and, as he 
himself has written, " I foolishly accepted it. 
My simple duty at that time was to have stayed 
with my widowed mother at Denmark Hill" 
[his father had died in 1864], " doing whatever 
my hand found to do there. Mixed vanity, 
hope of wider usefulness, and partly her plea- 
sure in my being at Oxford again, took me 
away from her and from myself." Mrs. Ruskin 
dearly loved Oxford, where her son had 
spent those three happy years at college. The 
professorship he continued to hold until 1879, 
delivering lectures on every phase of Art — 
lectures which have since been published — and 
only resigned his post when he discovered that 
the enthusiasm and constant attendance of the 
students were due rather to personal attach- 
ment and appreciation of his original and force- 
ful way of putting things, than to real interest 
in the subjects upon which he discoursed. 

Ruskin's famous periodical, " Fors Clavi- 
gera " (" Fortune, the Club-bearer "), was begun 
in 1 87 1, and for eight years was devoted to 
the expositions of its author's views upon every- 
thing in general, written with a nervous energy 



HIS LIFE. 33 

and an easy familiarity eminently Ruskinian, 
strikingly fresh in style and catholic in scope. 
It was in its pages that he announced his inten- 
tion of founding the "St. George's Guild," first 
established in that year — a practical attempt to 
start and carry on a land-owning society con- 
ducted on the principles which he would have 
all landowners to adopt. On this institution he 
at once settled .£7,000, and a London freehold 
of the value of ,£3,500 more, and of all this 
Miss Octavia Hill was appointed manageress. 

In this same "Fors," on July 2, 1877, 
appeared the author's famous criticism of Mr. 
Whistler and his pictures, then being exhibited 
at the Grosvenor Gallery. The trial has even 
now become a classic ; and how Mr. Whistler 
delivered his smart evidence in the witness- 
box, and how Ruskin — who was at the 
time confined to Brantwood with his first attack 
of serious illness — was unable to defend himself 
with his own testimony, and was made to pay 
his prosecutor one farthing for the rare privi- 
lege of saying what he thought of him — are to 
this day subjects of merry conversation where 
artists and lawyers meet. As a matter of fact, 
the verdict, which left each litigant to pay his 
own costs, made no call whatever on the purse 
of Mr. Ruskin. The amount of his costs 
reached, I believe, to £350, or thereabouts ; but a 



34 JOHN RUSK IN. 

group of devoted admirers at once subscribed the 
amount, even to the last farthing — Mr. Whist- 
ler's farthing — and the sum was paid forthwith. 
But Mr. Ruskin never knew to the last to what 
the amount of the cost attained, nor the names 
of any of his enthusiastic friends, save that 
of Mrs. Talbot, of Barmouth. To the end 
he was not satisfied with his nominal defeat. 
"I am blamed by my prudent acquaintances 
for being too personal," said he; "but 
truly I find vaguely objurgatory language 
generally a mere form of what Plato calls 
' shadow-fight.' " Similarly, when in conver- 
sation with him on one occasion I touched 
upon the subject, he quietly avoided it, saying, 
"I am afraid of a libel-action if I open my 
mouth, and if I can't say what I like about a 
person, I prefer to say nothing at all." 

By this time Mr. Ruskin's disciples and 
admirers, who, acknowledged " Ruskinites," 
were now to be counted by thousands, rightly 
perceived that if their Master's doctrines, social 
and artistic, were to bear good fruit, it would 
be necessary that some sort of organisation 
should be formed for the dissemination of his 
writings, the indexing of his works, and the 
carrying of his theories into practical effect. 
The result was the beginning of the foundation 
of the "Ruskin Societies of the Rose," in 




C/2 5 



tf~ 



HIS LIFE. 37 

1879, in London, Manchester, Sheffield, Glas- 
gow, Aberdeen, Birmingham, and other centres 
— bodies now collectively known as "The Ruskin 
Society," which have sought and obtained 
vitality by dealing generally with poetry and 
art, education, morals, ethics, and all such 
other subjects as the Ruskinian philosophy has 
pronounced upon, apart from the narrower or 
more defined teachings of Mr. Ruskin himself. 
These affiliated societies are all of them in 
active existence. 

After presenting many valuable gifts, artistic 
and mineralogical, to various institutions, en- 
dowing the Taylorian Galleries at Oxford with 
a school, furnishing it with exquisite works 
of art as copies, and making rich presents 
besides to the University, as well as to 
Cambridge and to the British Museum 
(whose collection of Silicas he catalogued) and 
rendering many other public services of a 
kindred nature, Mr. Ruskin crowned his work 
in this direction by the establishment and stock- 
ing of the St. George's Museum at Walkley, 
near Sheffield. He chose this spot because it 
was situated on the summit of a steep and 
toilsome hill, which, he hoped, the workers of 
Sheffield might understand to typify the ascent 
of the artistic path that none but earnest 
workers need care to face. But the hill proved 

4 



38 JOHN RUSK IN. 

to be too generally and too successfully de- 
terrent; and the removal of the reorganised 
museum to the fine old Georgian mansion of 
Meersbrook Park took place in 1890, when it 
was opened by the Earl of Carlisle. This 
beautiful museum, placed by deed under the joint 
control and management of the Trustees of the 
St. George's Guild and of the Corporation, 
contains a large collection of works of fine 
art, rare and exquisite books, Venetian casts, 
missals, splendid examples from his collection 
of mineralogy and natural history— all selected 
with thorough knowledge and purposeful care 
by "The Master " himself. And Ruskin House, 
Walkley, was in 1893 turned into a Girls' 
Training Home, with the hearty approval and 
cordial wishes of Ruskin. 

But by this time his course was nearly 
run. He resigned the Slade Professorship, to 
which he had been re-elected in 1876, when a 
passing but distressing attack of brain-dis- 
turbance warned him that he was straining too 
far his powers of endurance by the multiplicity 
and arduousness of his labours. In 1884, when 
he was engaged in delivering another series of 
lectures at Oxford, he found it necessary to 
cease their public delivery, and to confine them 
to students — for the rush of the outside world 
to listen to the lecturer, no less than the wide 



HIS LIFE. 39 

range of subject and method of dealing with 
it adopted by him — acted upon the University 
authorities as an electric shock. The final split 
soon came ; the Professor, it was thought, was 
about to assail in his next lecture what he 
considered to be the vivisectionist tendencies 
of the University. Pressure was brought to 
bear upon him to " postpone" the lecture, 
which, in fact, he did. Ruskin then asked 
the University for a grant to permit of the 
better arrangement of the Art Section under 
his care. It was declined, on the ground of 
the University being in debt, but a few days 
later a vote was passed " endowing vivisection 
in the University," and on the following Sunday 
Mr. Ruskin's resignation was in the Vice- 
Chancellor's hands. 

The facts connected with the matter, it 
may be said, appear to have been strangely 
burked. Since that time Mr. Ruskin retired 
from personal contact with the public, although 
for a time his pen was still busy, and the press 
gave forth more than one volume of his earlier, 
as well as of his later, writings. But his first 
attack of illness was succeeded by others, under 
which he gradually, but yet more peacefully, 
sank, until there came the end which robbed 
England of one of her greatest men, and, so to 
speak, cast the better part of her into mourning. 



CHAPTER II. 

CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 

It is impossible to form any accurate esti- 
mate of the literary work of Ruskin, or of the 
worth of the man himself and his acts, without 
taking his character and temper, as influenced 
by his health, largely into account. This, of 
course, is in a measure true of all men. But 
with one possessed of an organisation so com- 
plex and delicate as that of Ruskin, such 
knowledge and careful judgment are absolutely 
necessary, for they afford the clue to many 
apparent inconsistencies. 

The conditions of his rearing all tended to 
foster self-conceit in the lad ; and the wonder is 
that, being as clever as he was, and finding him- 
self the object of constant applause from admir- 
ing friends, of the worship of parents, and the 
approval of some of the first intellects of the 
day — the wonder is, in truth, that he was so 
little of a prig. But his severe Bible teaching, 
the oft-repeated assurance that he was to become 
a preacher, and an eminent one, too, predisposed 
him, perhaps, towards the early idea of being 
40 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 41 

appointed to be unto the public as a missionary, 
and later, as an oracle and a seer. But many 
of his most admirable qualities barred the way 
to his complete success in these characters, and 
made him feel, to his intense and abiding dis- 
appointment in his later years, that he was a 
very Cassandra among the prophets. " All my 
life,'* he declared in my hearing some years ago, 
" all my life I have been talking to the people, 
and they have listened, not to what I say, but to 
how I say it; they have cared not for the matter, 
but only for the manner of my words. And so I 
have made people go wrong in a hundred ways, 
and they have done nothing at all. I am not," 
he added bitterly, "an art-teacher; they have 
picked up a few things from me, but I find I 
have been talking too much and doing too 
little, and so have been unable to form a school ; 
and people have not been able to carry out 
what I say, because they do not understand 
it." 

If we had to define the main characteristics 
of Ruskin's mind, " and the keys to the secret 
of all he said or did," I think we could hardly 
do better than repeat the analysis he made of 
Turner's ; " Uprightness, generosity, extreme 
tenderness of heart, sensuality, excessive ob- 
stinacy, irritability, infidelity ; " and, we should 
have to add, " impulsiveness, violent prejudice, 

4* 



42 JOHN RUSK IN. 

kindliest sympathy, and profound piety/' But 
impulsiveness, and its offspring — prejudice — 
were at the root of too many of his acts and his 
hastier judgments. He was supposed to hate 
Jews on principle, not from religious motives, 
but simply because some of the lowest and most 
contemptible of them practised the usury that 
persecution had forced upon them ; he despised 
all bishops, because some of them died rich. 
No one really deserves hanging, he says some- 
where, save bankers and bishops. Perhaps this 
was written at the time of his famous duel with 
the late Bishop of Manchester on the subject of 
usury, when his indignation was aroused by 
what he imagined was the lukewarmness of his 
antagonist. Yet in no man's company did he 
more rejoice than in that of Dr. Harvey Good- 
win, Bishop of Carlisle, whom he entertained 
at Brantwood more than once, and whom he 
loved and esteemed as he loved few others. 
But all his prejudice is to be traced to exces- 
sive generosity — a fact which, with all his 
love of paradox, he never would recognise 
himself. 

It is not a little surprising, seeing how 
delicate and troubled he was in general health, 
and how numerous and actively bitter were his 
adversaries, that the engaging sweetness of his 
character was so often uppermost. His natural 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 43 

gentleness was proof against the trying circum- 
stances of his early education. At Oxford, as 
he himself tells us, " I could take any quantity 
of jests, though I could not make one," even 
to the point of seeing with good-humour the 
fruit he had sent for from London thrown 
out of the window to the porters children. No 
man ever smiled more agreeably in his greet- 
ing; no man's eyes ever looked more kindly 
into yours. Having nothing to conceal, he was 
frank, even to a fault, making no attempt 
to hide his little amiable weaknesses and venial 
defects. 

" I like Wilson Barrett," he said one day, 
when discussing the drama ; " he flatters me so 
deliciously and in such tactful taste" — an ad- 
mission, by the way, confirmed long before in 
a letter of instructions to his private secretary, 
written from abroad: — " Send me as little as 
you possibly can. Tie up the knocker — say 
I'm sick — I'm dead (flattering and love-letters, 
please, in any attainable quantity. Nothing 
else)." Love-letters! how many did he not 
write and delight in receiving — platonic for the 
most part, perhaps for the whole, but the 
brightest, quaintest, most humorous, merriest 
love-letters imaginable! For the respect, the 
veneration, and admiration he entertained for 
the beau sexe as a whole — as an institution, as 



44 JOHN RUSK IN. 

Artemus Ward calls it — were intensified, were 
all focussed, indeed, on young, pretty, and in- 
nocent femininity. Humour bubbles over the 
pages of many of his books and letters, but it 
is never quite so sly and quite so happy as 
when charming, modest, and lively girls are the 
subject or the object of them ; and I have heard 
a score of anecdotes of the pretty thraldom 
under which he has suffered beneath their yoke, 
and the not unwelcome tricks that have oft 
been played upon him. I have said that his 
amorous sport was entirely platonic ; it was 
more than that, it was essentially paternal : 
and usually ended in his presenting to his 
charmer, or tormentor, some dainty gift, with 
a playful grace that was altogether peculiar to 
himself. 

Herein I am breaking no confidences, for 
has he not told us all about it a score of 
pleasant times? "My pets" — his adopted 
daughter, Mrs. Arthur Severn (his veritable 
"Angel in the house") and Miss Hilliard, now 
Mrs. W. H. Churchill — are familiar, through 
his books, to all good Ruskinites. He speaks 
of them often enough in " Fors," and of others 
too : " First, those two lovely ladies who were 
studying the Myosotis palustris with me ; yes, 
and, by the way, a little beauty from Cheshire, 
who came in afterwards ; and then that charm- 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 45 

ing (I didn't say she was charming, but she 
was and is) lady whom I had charge of at 
Furness Abbey, and her two daughters, and 
those three beautiful girls who tormented me 
so on the 23rd of May, 1875, an d another who 
greatly disturbed my mind at church only a 
Sunday or two ago with the sweetest little 
white straw bonnet I have ever seen, only 
letting a lock or two escape of the curliest 
hair ; so that I was fain to make her a present 
of a Prayer-book afterwards, advising her that 
her tiny ivory one was too coquettish ; and my 
own pet cousin ; and I might name more, but 
leave their accusation to their consciences." 
On another occasion, speaking of his garden 
and house at Denmark Hill, he says : " The 
camelias and azaleas stand in the ante-room of 
my library ; and everybody says, when they 
come in, ' How pretty ! ' and my young lady 
friends have leave to gather what they like to 
put in their hair when they are going to balls." 
He himself once admitted that when he fell 
in love in a "mildly confidential way" — 
"according to my usual manner of paying 
court to my mistresses, I wrote an essay for 
her, nine foolscap pages long, on the rela- 
tive dignity of music and painting ! " Many 
will remember with how much enthusiasm 
Charles Dickens, thirty or forty years ago, 



46 JOHN RUSK IN. 

endorsed in All the Year Round what 
Ruskin had to say of " the beauties of the 
maids of merry England," and the artistic 
grace of their then fashionable attire. Even 
when combating an obnoxious theory, he 
would sometimes revert to pretty womanhood 
for an illustration, as when, in animadverting 
on the Darwinian doctrine of the Descent of 
Man as mischievous (in looking rather to the 
growth of the flesh than to the breath of the 
spirit), he says: "The loss of mere happiness 
in such modes of thought is incalculable. 
When I see a girl dance, I thank Heaven 
that made her cheerful as well as graceful, 
and envy neither the science nor sentiment 
of my Darwinian friend, who sees in her only 
a cross between a dodo and a daddy-long- 
legs." And again, when contesting the idea 
that a knowledge of anatomy is essential for 
painters, he writes to Monsieur Chesneau : 
"Will you please ask the next lover you 
meet how far he thinks the beauty of his 
mistress's fore-arm depends on the double 
bones in it, and of her humerus on the single 
one ? " Nay, one would swear that his " little 
Susie " — one of the sister ladies of Thwaite, 
to whom he wrote the delightful letters which 
have since been published under the title of 
" Hortus Inclusus " — must have been at once 




JOHN RUSKIN, 1842. 

FROM THE WATER COLOUR BY GEORGE RICHMOND, R.A. 
{By permission of Arthur Severn, Esq., R.I.) 



{See p. 174-) 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 49 

pretty and graceful, were one to judge alone by 
the tone adopted in the letters he wrote her. 
But, as a matter of fact, Miss Susannah Beever 
— his neighbour in Coniston village, living in 
a house on an eminence looking over the lake- 
head — was a few years his senior, and was 
seventy years of age at least when Ruskin 
first knew her. To the end of her long life 
this clever lady was surprisingly young, and so 
bright and cheerful and sweet and charming, 
that she fully deserved the daily letters that 
the Master of Brantwood sent her. She had, 
indeed, discovered for herself the art of growing 
old beautifully, and she reaped the reward by 
completely enslaving the intellectual affections 
of her ageing friend. 

But his love for pretty girls in no way 
lessened his love for children — a passion 
which inspired some of the most pathetic 
and beautiful passages that have issued from 
his pen. This tendency, together with his 
cordial and courteous old-fashioned hospitality 
and his overflowing charity, combined to form 
the bright side of his character — a side so 
bright that on the other there is none of his 
shortcomings but is thrown into shadow and 
belittled in its brilliancy. He has chosen to 
refer to his nature as " a worker's and a 
miser's . . . though I love giving, yet my 



50 JOHN RUSK IN. 

notion is not at all dividing my last crust with 
a beggar, but riding through a town like a 
Commander of the Faithful, having any quantity 
of sequins and ducats in saddle-bags, and throw- 
ing them around in radiant showers and hailing 
handfuls ; with more bags to brace on when 
those were empty." But herein he did himself, 
as he often did, gross injustice, for I have 
ample documentary evidence in my possession 
that he delighted in nothing more — and almost 
daily gave rein to his delight — than giving, 
secretly, tactfully, and with kindliest judg- 
ment. 

It is not too much to say that the record 
of his benefactions and almsgiving would fill a 
volume. How when his father died he gave 
forthwith to those relations who, he thought, had 
been forgotten in the will, the sum of ^17,000, 
and to a cousin advanced another ,£15,000, a 
debt he promptly wiped off — "which hereby 
my cousin will please observe is very heartily 
done ; and he is to be my cousin as he used 
to be, without any more thought of it" — 
has ere now been made public. But his 
thousand -and -one kindnesses — now acts of 
grace and delicacy, now of substantial help 
and rescue — have never reached the ken of 
the public save by the confession of the 
recipients. A few extracts from his letters to 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 51 

his secretary during the year 1866 may give 
some idea of the extent and number of his 
kindly deeds, and of his solicitude and warmth 
of heart, though they give little clue to the times 
out of number on which the gentle Samaritan 
was victimised — the usual fate of the philan- 
thropist who prides himself, beyond any other 
quality, on his worldly shrewdness and his 
knowledge of life and character. 

On February 22nd he writes with some 
show of mystery — 

"Here's something, please, I want done very much. 
Will you please go to the Crystal Palace to-morrow or 
the day after, which is the last day, but to-morrow better, 
and, if it is not sold, buy the lizard canary (^1) No. 282, 
page 17 of catalogue, in any name you like — not mine, nor 
yours — and give the bird to anybody who you think will 
take care of it, and I'll give you the price when I see you 
— which must be soon." 

To this canary, which was duly bought, 
there evidently hung a tale, for it formed the 
subject of many subsequent references and 
anxious directions. 

On the 5th of March he wrote — 

" Did Ned speak to you about an Irish boy whom I 
want to get boarded and lodged, and put to some art 
schooling — and I don't know how? " 

Three days afterwards he proceeded — 

'Thanks for note about the boy, and infinite thanks 
for kindest offer. But I've no notion of doing as much 



52 JOHN RUSK IN. 

as this for him. All I want is a decent lodging — he is 
now a shop-boy. I only want a bit of a garret in a 
decent house, and means of getting him into some school 
of art. I fancy Kensington best — and you should look 
after him morally and I artistically." 

On the -27th the boy from Ireland was duly 
settled on Ruskin's charity, and on the same 
date began the arrangement which ended in 
a gift of a hundred pounds to George Cruik- 
shank. Then ensued a prolonged visit to the 
Continent, on the conclusion of which there 
came a new request for almoner's duty : — 

"The enclosed is from a funny, rather nice, half- 
crazy old French lady (guessing at her from her letters), 
and I have a curiosity to know what kind of a being it is. 
Would you kindly call on her to ask for further information 
about the ' predicament,' and, if you think it at all curable 
or transit-able, I'll advance her 20 pounds without interest. 
I've only told her you will call to l inquire into the 
circumstances of the case.' " 

Although he complained that he " can't 
understand the dear old lady's letters," Ruskin 
decided — of course — to come to her help, 
charged his secretary to "look after" her a 
little, and added, "I shouldn't mind placing 
the over-charge sum at her bankers, besides." 

"Also look over the enclosed form from . I'm 

very sorry about this man — anything more wretched than 
the whole business can't be. He'll never paint, and how 
to keep him from starvation and madness I can't see. 1 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 53 

can't keep every unhappy creature who mistakes his voca- 
tion. What can I do? I've rather a mind to send him 
this fifty pounds, which would be the simplest way to me 
of getting quit of him — but I can't get quit of the 
thought of him. Is his wife nice, do you know — or if you 
don't, would you kindly go and see ? I've written to him 
to write to you, or to explain things to you, if you call. 

wrote to me in a worry for money the day before 

yesterday. I wrote I couldn't help him. All the earlier 
part of this week an old friend of my father's — a staff-writer 
on the Times — was bothering and sending his wife out here 
in cabs in the rain, to lend him ^800, on no security to 
speak of, and yesterday comes a letter from Edinburgh 
saying that my old friend Dr. John Brown is gone mad — 
owing to, among other matters, pecuniary affairs (after a 
whole life of goodness and usefulness)." 

Three days afterwards he put his foot down 
— temporarily. 

" Tell it's absolutely no use his trying to see me 

(I don't even see my best friends at present, as you know), 
and nothing is of the least influence with me but plain 
facts, plainly told, and right conduct" 

— a declaration that would have called a smile 
to the lips of many of the impostors who 
squeezed, before and since, the soft heart of the 
too sympathetic and charitable professor. 
On the 14th of September Ruskin wrote—- 

"That boy's sketches are marvellous. I should like to 
see him and be of any use I could to him," 

and immediately followed it by another scheme 
of charity. 



$4 JOHN RUSK IN. 

" Please just look over enclosed," he wrote, " and see if 
any little good can or ought to be done. I want you to go to 
Boulogne for me to see after the widow of a pilot who died 
at Folkestone of cholera. They were dear friends of mine, 
both as good as gold — she now quite desolate. When could 
you go, taking your cousin with you, if you like, for a few 
days ? You*would be well treated at the Hotel des Bains. 
I'll come over to-morrow and tell you about it. 

" I don't think it will be necessary," he continued, a day 
or two later, " for you to stay at Boulogne longer than the 
enclosed will carry you. It is more as a bearer of the 
expression of my sympathy that I ask you to go than to 
do much. The poor woman ought to be able to manage 
well enough with her one child, if she lives, and I doubt 
not she will do all she ought — but at present she is stunned, 
and it will do her good to have you to speak to." 

A few days afterwards another matter was 
forced on his attention. 

"This business is serious" [the next letter ran]. 

"Write to Miss that I do not choose at present to 

take any notice of it, else "the creditor would endeavour 
to implicate me in it at once, if there was the least ap- 
pearance of my having been acquainted with the transac- 
tion — and I don't at all intend to lose money by force, 
whatever I may do for my poor friend when she is quit of 
lawyers." 

Once more Ruskin lost patience at the 
unreasonable demands to which he was sub- 
jected, and on the 9th of November he wrote — 

" All that you have done is nice and right — but I am 
sorry to see that you are yourself over-worked. Also, I 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT 55 

will take some measures to relieve you of this nuisance by 
writing a letter somewhere on modern destitution in the 
middle classes. I hope to be able to do this more effec- 
tively towards the beginning of the year, and to state that 
for the present I must retire from the position necessarily 
now occupied by a publicly recognised benevolent — or 
simple — person. . . I simply have at present no more 
money — and therefore am unable to help — in fact, I am a 
long way within of my proper banker's balance — and I 
don't choose at present to sell out stock and diminish my 
future power of usefulness. 

"I think I shall do most ultimate good by distinctly 
serviceable appropriation of funds, not by saving here and 
there an unhappy soul — I wish I could — when I hear of 
them — as you well know. I am at the end of my means 
just now, and that's all about it." 

Wherewith he at once made a further gift of a 
hundred pounds, " as I said I would." Such is 
the record of a few months of a single year taken 
at random ; and it may fairly be assumed that 
one year much resembled another in the cycle 
of the Ruskinian doctrine of Faith, Hope, and, 
above all, Charity. 

In his taste for amusement Mr. Ruskin 
was always simple. Almost to the last he 
retained his love for the theatre, and was an 
admirable critic of a play. " Now that I am 
getting old," he told me, "and can climb the 
hills no longer, my chief pleasure is to go to 
the theatre. Just as I can always enjoy 
Prout, even when I sometimes tire of Turner, 



56 JOHN RUSK IN. 

so one of the only pleasures in my life en- 
tirely undiminished is to see a good actor 
and a good play. I was immensely pleased 
with Claudian and Mr. Wilson Barrett's act- 
ing of it." [It was during the run of that 
play that this conversation took place.] " In- 
deed, I admired it so much that I went to 
see it three times from pure enjoyment of it, 
although as a rule I cannot sit out a tragic 
play. It is not only that it is the most 
beautifully mounted piece I ever saw, but it 
is that every feeling that is expressed in the 
play, and every law of morality that is taught 
in it, is entirely right. I call that charming 
little play of School entirely immoral, be- 
cause the teaching of it is that a man should 
swagger about in knickerbockers, shoot a bull, 
and marry an heiress. Now, as for the litera- 
ture of modern plays, I think that in comedies 
the language is often very precious and 
piquant — more so in French than in English 
pieces ; but I know of no tragedy, French 
or English, whose language satisfies me." 
And he added that he was a critical admirer, 
too, with reservations, of Miss Mary Anderson 
— " a sweet lady and an excellent person — but 
not, I think, a great actress." 

In fine weather, when he did not roam 
about the moors and hills that overlook 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 57 

Coniston Lake, he loved to cut brushwood 
that grew in the wood behind his house ; 
and in bad, when not reading, or drawing, 
or examining his fossils or other treasures, 
he would revel in a game of chess. He was 
an excellent player, and at one time talked 
of "publishing a selection of favourite old 
games by players of genius and imagination, 
as opposed to the stupidity called chess- 
playing in modern days. Pleasant play, truly ! 
in which the opponents sit calculating and 
analysing for twelve hours, tire each other 
nearly into apoplexy or idiocy, and end in a 
draw or a victory by an odd pawn." 

The darker side of his nature almost balanced, 
in intensity, the brighter. There is a weird, 
almost Dantesque, vein running through it. 
His love of life and beauty gave rise to a 
perfectly morbid horror of what was ugly or 
sad — illness and death were ideas utterly re- 
pugnant in the terror they bore in upon him. 
In a private letter he speaks of " Death and 
the North Wind — both Devil's inventions as far 
as I can make out." Indeed, during one of his 
last visits to London, I heard him say how his 
attacks of illness were brought on, or, at least, 
in a measure, induced, by the knowledge of 
the gradual approach of death — not so much 
the fear of death, he hastened to add, as the 



58 JOHN RUSK IN. 

regret at the deprivation of life, which he was 
convinced he enjoyed with infinitely greater 
intensity than others did. 

The very idea of a funeral was abhorrent to 
him. He even declined to attend that of the 
Duke of Albany, of whom he was very fond; 
for the young Prince often sought his company 
at Oxford, and the old man and the young 
learned to appreciate the virtues of the other. 
"I had the deepest regard and respect," he 
said about the time of the Duke's death, " for 
what I would call his genius, rather than his 
intellect. He was entirely graceful and kind 
in every thought or deed. There was no 
mystery about him — he was perfectly frank 
and easy 3|i£h everyone. At Oxford I thought 
,he desired to ta%e all the advantage that was 
possible from the university course. But I did 
not attend the funeral. It is ten years or more 
since I went to one," he continued gravely ; 
"and though there are several whom I love 
very dearly, I doubt very much if I should see 
them to the grave were they to die before me. 
No — I shall go to no more funerals till I go 
to my own." In this relation there may be 
appropriately quoted the reply he sent to the 
Secretary of the Church of England Funeral 
Reform Association — a society of all others of 
whose attentions and requests for recommenda 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 59 

tion and approval he would most cheerfully 
have dispensed : — 

" Sir, — I entirely approve of the object of the Funeral 
Reform Association ; but if I could stop people from 
wasting their money while they were alive, they might 
bury themselves how they liked for aught I care. 
" Faithfully yours, 

"John Ruskin." 

The growing knowledge of a constitutional 
brain-weakness caused him acute suffering, and 
he made no attempt to conceal the fact ; on the 
contrary, it was a frank topic of conversation 
with him. There is something profoundly 
pathetic in a reference of his to his keen enjoy- 
ment, in his childhood, in reading Don Quixote's 
crazy life, but of the superlative .sadness with 
which the reference or thought of it filled him 
in later years. "My illnesses, so-called," he 
says somewhere else, "are only brought on 
by vexation or worry, and leave me, after a 
few weeks of wandering thoughts, the same 
as I was before, only a little sadder and wiser. 
Probably, if I am spared till I am seventy, I 
shall be as sad and wise as I ever wish to be, 
and will try to keep so to the end." 

At the age of twenty-one he spat blood, as 
a result of putting on a spurt in his study at 
Oxford, and obtained a year's leave of absence 
to recover. Ever since that time his letters 



6o JOHN RUSK IN. 

are proof of constant ailing and sometimes of 
suffering. 

True illness, severe enough to confine him 
to his bed, he never had, from his alarming 
Oxford symptoms down to 1871, when an 
inflammatory illness laid him low at Matlock. 
Of the manner in which he characteristically 
took his treatment in great measure into his 
own hands he writes thus, under date 24th 
July, 1871 :— 

"Really your simplicity about naughty me is the most 
comic thing I know, among all my old friends. Me 
docile to Doctors ! I watched them — (I had three) — to 
see what they knew of the matter : did what they advised 
me, for two days; found they were utterly ignorant of 
the illness & were killing me. I had inflammation of 
the bowels, and they gave me ice ! & tried to nourish 
me with milk ! Another 12 hours & I should have been 
past hope. I stopped in the 7niddle of a draught of iced 
water, burning with insatiable thirst — thought over the 
illness myself steadily — and ordered the doctors out of 
the house. Everybody was in agony, but I swore and 
raged till they had to give in ; ordered hot toast and 
water in quantities, and mustard poultices to the bowels. 
One doctor had ordered fomentation ; that I persevered 
in, adding mustard to give outside pain. I used brandy 
and water as hot as I could drink it, for stimulant, kept 
myself up with it, washed myself out with floods of toast 
and water, & ate nothing & refused all medicines. In 
twenty-four hours I had brought the pain under, in 
twenty-four more I had healthy appetite for meat, and 
was safe; but the agony of poor Joanna! forced to give 




JOHN RUSKIN AT GLENFINLAS WATERFALL, 1853. 

BY STR JOHN MILLAIS, BART., R.A. 
(By special permission 0/ Sir Henry Acland, owner of the picture and copyright.) 

(See p. 178.) 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 63 

me meat, for I ordered roast chicken instantly, when the 
doctors, unable to get at me, were imploring her to 
prevail on me not to kill myself, as they said I should. 
The poor thing stood it nobly — of course — none of them 
could move me, on which I forced them to give me cold 
roast beef & mustard at two o'clock in the morning ! ! 
And here I am, thank God, to all intents and purposes 
quite well again ; but I was within an ace of the grave, 
and I know now something of Doctors that — well — I 
thought Moliere bad enough on them, but he's compli- 
mentary to what / shall be after this." 

But with the exception of this grave, tragi- 
comical attack he never needed the calling in of 
a doctor for any physical ill. Yet at no time 
was he robust, a spine-weakness developed into 
a chronic stoop, and the aches and pains of a 
highly nervous, hard-worked constitution were 
for ever reminding him of the weakness of all 
flesh. A number of his letters are before me, 
written to his secretary and assistant — with 
whom, as I have already said, he was in ex- 
tremely frequent communication — during the 
years 1865 and 1866; and in many of them 
may be seen the record of his ailing moments 
and minor infirmities. 

"You must think it very strange in me," he writes 
under date 3rd November, 1865, "never asking you to 
come and see me. But I am very languid and ill just 
now — and I seem of all things to dread talking; it 
seems to force me to use my head faster than it should 



64 JOHN RUSK IN. 

be used — I suppose I shall come out of the nervous 
fit some day. I am pretty well on the whole." 

In the summer of the next year (3rd August, 
1866) he writes : — 

"I've been very sulky and ill, and somehow have 
wanted what humanity I could get, even out of letters, 
so I've kept them." 

Again, on the 3rd of November of the s^ame 
year, he says : — 

"You can't at all think what complicated and acute 
worry I've been living in the last two months. I'm 
getting a little less complex now — only steady headache 
instead of thorn-fillet — I don't mean to be irreverent; 
but in a small way in one's poor little wretched humanity 
it but expresses the differences. That's why I couldn't 
think about Cruikshank or anything." 

On the 2nd of December he again com- 
plains : — 

"I have perpetual faceache, which quinine hardly 
touches, and am pulled down rather far ; but in other 
respects a little better — stomach and the like." 

And so things went on — never very bad, 
but often bad enough to worry the neurotic 
subject with his little valetudinary troubles, 
while all the while his self-imposed tasks in- 
creased in daily volume. At one time, indeed, 
the correspondence of friends and applicants 
of all kinds, and particularly of sympathisers — 
those most troublesome of well-wishers — en- 



CHARACTER, HEALTH, AND TEMPERAMENT. 65 

croached so severely upon his time and patience, 
rendering the conditions of his life almost intol- 
erable, that the issue of this quaint manifesto 
was decided upon : — 

" Mr. Ruskin trusts that his friends will pardon his 
declining correspondence in the spring, and spending 
such days as may be spared to him in the fields, instead 
of at his desk. Had he been well he would have been 
in Switzerland, and begs his correspondents to imagine 
that he is so; for there is no reason, because he is 
obliged to stop in England, that he should not be 
allowed to rest there." 

Little wonder, then, that his health told upon 
his temper, and that nervous irritability tended 
to modify his character, and, to^ some extent, 
tended to embitter an old age that was already 
full of disappointments and disillusionments. 
After a lifetime of preaching to an unheeding 
world, or battling with a hostile or scornful one, 
finding his system of philosophy and theories 
rejected, or, if accepted, accepted only as the 
teaching of other and younger men, it is but 
natural that he should be prompted to say, 
after half-a-century of toil, " Some of me is 
dead, more of me stronger. I have learned a 
few things, forgotten many. In the total of 
me, I am but the same youth, disappointed and 
rheumatic." But, not beaten even to the last ; 
badgered and baited all through his life ; at- 

€ 6* 



66 JOHN RUSK IN. 

tacked by some, scoffed at by others — as all 
fighters of original genius must ever be — he 
complained not of counter-attack. It was the 
supineness of those who listened and applauded, 
but continued in what he held was the down- 
ward road, which caused him to confess the 
state of " quiet rage and wonder at everything 
people say and do in which I habitually live." 



CHAPTER III. 

AUTHOR, BOOKMAN, AND STYLIST. 

It is presumed that most of those who read 
these pages are too well informed on Ruskin's 
work to need any recapitulation of the order, 
or the titles, or even the purpose of his books. 
But it may be set down that they comprise 
art-criticism, art-instruction, architecture, natural 
history, political economy, morals and ethics, 
mineralogy and geology, biography and auto- 
biography, fairy - tale, military tactics, the 
" higher journalism " and most other things 
besides. But time will, perhaps, decide that 
by " Modern Painters " he will both stand and 
fall — a paradox which himself, I fancy, would 
be the first to admit. It is the monument 
he has raised to himself: but other works 
rank above them in the late author's opinion, 
if not for literary style, at least for concision 
of manner and closeness of thought. He told 
me he had ''never written closer" than in 
his University Lectures, known as "Aratra 
Pentelici " (" and they will recognise it one 
of these days "), while he has publicly declared 

67 



68 JOHN RUSK IN. 

that in that book, in "Val d'Arno," and 
u Eagle's Nest," " every word is weighed with 
care." " I give far more care to my lectures 
than to my books," he said ; " They are for the 
most part most carefully written, although I 
sometimes introduce matter extemporaneously 
in the delivery of them. II have taken more 
pains with my Oxford lectures than with any- 
thing else I have ever done, and I must say 
that I am immensely disappointed at their not 
being more constantly quoted and read." And 
thus saying, he took down a volume of the 
"Aratra" and read the concluding pages of 
one of the lectures in his own powerful and 
impressive manner. Then he closed the book, 
softly, with a sigh. 

Ruskin was, indeed, a rigorous critic of 
his own work, and cut to pieces " Modern 
Painters," " Seven Lamps of Architecture," 
"Stones of Venice," and "Elements of Draw- 
ing," when preparing second editions, "be- 
cause in the three first all the religious 
notions are narrow, and many false, and in 
the fourth there is a vital mistake about out- 
line, doing great damage to all the rest." 
But if it is one of the disturbing faults of 
Ruskin' s books that he often owns to his 
later change of thought, it is one of his 
merits that he is ready to confess it, clearly 



AUTHOR, BOOKMAN, AND STYLIST. 69 

and unmistakably. These changes of thought 
he once intended to tabulate, while quaintly 
apologising for them. " Mostly matters of 
any consequence are three-sided, or four- 
sided, or polygonal; and the trotting round 
a polygon is severe work for people in any 
way stiff in their opinions." At the same 
time he declared that his changes were those 
of a tree, by nourishment and natural growth 
— not those of a cloud. And what is his 
reflection on his own auctorial life? "I am 
quite horrified to see," he wrote to "Susie" 
— or was it " Rosie " ? — " what a lot of books 
I've written, and how cruel I've been to my- 
self and everybody else whoever has to read 
them." 

It was in his quality of author that Ruskin 
ran a-tilt at the book-selling trade, and suffered 
not a little in pocket from their retaliation. 
He objected to the whole system of " discount " 
as it had already then degenerated. The 
trade, not unnaturally, perhaps, retorted with 
a very effectual boycott, and Mr. Ruskin had 
to distribute his books to the public direct 
from his own special and private publisher — 
Mr. George Allen, who before had been his 
engraver. More lately a compromise was 
effected with the shops ; but, curiously enough, 
the trade boycott seems to have been taken 



70 JOHN RUSK IN. 

up by the Press, which for a long series of 
years maintained rigorous silence in respect 
to Mr. Ruskin's newly - published works. 
Writing in 1887, Mr. E. T. Cook remarked: 
" So, too, the professedly literary journals have 
not noticed anything that one of the foremost 
literary men of the time has written since 
1872!" Meanwhile, his works were being 
pirated in America and his own editions under- 
sold — a circumstance which increased his dis- 
like to the vulgarer side of American life, and 
of that unhappy country "which contains neither 
castle nor ruins." 

There is assuredly no need to await the ver- 
dict of posterity to establish Ruskin's position 
as a writer of English prose. No man pos- 
sessed of such a power of language, such a 
wealth of imagination and beauty of thought 
ever spent more care in the polishing of his 
sentences. And this not only with his written 
books, but with his newspaper letters, on which 
— as he told me himself — he expended the 
utmost pains at his command. 

With such natural gifts as these, his training 
was exactly such as would best develop his 
powers and form his style. The extensive 
Bible-reading and Bible-learning, forced upon 
him when a child, laid the foundations for 
pure and vigorous English, and encouraged 



AUTHOR, BOOKMAN, AND STYLIST. 71 

his later admiration for the manner of Dr. 
Johnson. This alone would have gone far to 
educate him into the accomplished rhapsodist 
he soon became. But other carefully-selected 
reading exerted powerful influence upon his 
future style. Byron and Wordsworth he 
studied carefully (and indeed knew pretty well 
by heart) — the former for perfect fluency and 
realistic truth of vision, and the latter for the 
beauty of simplicity and naturalness of language 
and expression. " Even Shakespeare's Venice 
was visionary; and Portia as impossible as 
Miranda. But Byron told me of, and re- 
animated for me, the real people whose feet 
had worn the marble I trod on.'* And, finally, 
Carlyle, his friend and admirer, gave the final 
turn of originality of expression and that effec- 
tive directness and apparent ruggedness which 
endows all that Ruskin ever wrote with a rich 
quality of its own, and made the man, as Mr. 
Justice Pearson said, " the most eloquent writer 
of English, except Jeremy Taylor." In point 
of thought, Ruskin often confessed himself the 
pupil of Carlyle ; but hardly less is he so in re- 
spect to literary expression ; and the Sage of 
Chelsea returned the compliment by declaring 
to Mr. Froude that many of Ruskin' s utter- 
ances "pierced like arrows into my heart." 
We surely do not require the enthusiastic attes- 



72 JOHN RUSKIN. 

tation of Mathew Arnold, or George Eliot, or 
John Morley, or the rest, of Ruskin's trans- 
cendent position as a prose-writer ; but if it be 
true, as indeed it is, that " Ruskin writes beau- 
tifully because he thinks beautifully, because his 
thoughts spring, like Pallas, ready armed," it 
was not because " the fashion of the armour 
costs him nothing," for his note-books exist, 
like the sketch-books of a painter, with beauti- 
ful descriptive sentences, sweetly turned and 
carefully moulded, ready for use when required, 
thus attesting the constant and almost exces- 
sive care, as well as the constructive method of 
his style. 

Ruskin's own estimate of his work, in his 
comparison of it with Tennyson's, is delightful 
in its modesty, and sufficient testimony of his 
critical faculty, or, at least, unselfish appreci- 
ation. "As an illustrator of natural beauty 
Tennyson is far beyond anything I ever did or 
could have done," he says ; and elsewhere de- 
clared that there is finer word-painting in the 
poet's " Brook " than can be found in all his 
own prose-writings put together. But, for all 
that, Ruskin is and must be regarded, by friend 
and foe alike, as the great modern master of 
English prose — the Magician of Coniston Lake. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE ARTIST. 

A dozen years ago it might have been neces- 
sary to defend the position of Ruskin as an 
artist, or perhaps even primarily to inform the 
general public of the wondrous beauty to be 
found in his drawings. But since that time 
editions de luxe have fully established his rank 
as one of the most exquisite draughtsmen, both 
with the point and in water-colour sketching, 
that the country has produced. His work is 
limited in extent, rarely completed, and never 
executed for public exhibition ; but for manual 
skill, microscopic truth of observation, directed 
and moulded by a passionate poetic sense of 
the most refined and gentle order, he has rarely 
been excelled. He was, in truth, a landscape 
and architectural artist of the greatest talent, 
of infinite delicacy, grace, feeling, and patience ; 
and the writer has more than once heard him 
deplore that he had not given a greater share 
of his life to the practice of art by which he 
might have effected more real good than by all 
his word-painting and pen-preaching: "Not 

d 7 73 



74 JOHN RUSK IN. 

that I should have done anything great," said 
he, "but I could have made such beautiful 
records of things. It is one of the greatest 
chagrins of my life." 

In respect to his theories of art, its technique, 
and execution, Ruskin entertained views which 
were not shared by the majority of the greatest 
painters of his day — even of most of his most in- 
timate friends and admirers. Such, for exam- 
ple, was the theory that all shadows should be 
painted purple — a dictum which most of the 
luministes of later days, the very "polar con- 
traries " of Ruskin, have widely adopted, 
though not perhaps to the full extent. Mr. 
Goodall, R.A., told me once of the surprise 
of Madame Rosa Bonheur when Ruskin laid 
down this proposition to her with all the firm- 
ness of conviction, and stoutly maintained 
through their crisp little discussion that thus 
should all her shadows be painted. " Mais oui> 
ma-t-il bien dit^ said she, in repeating the con- 
versation, " rouge et bleu ; " and she further de- 
clared that she was convinced that his views 
on this matter, as well as on his artistic work 
generally, were governed by a physical pecu- 
liarity of his retina, and that he possessed be- 
sides the microscopic eye of a bird: "// voit 
precisement comme un oiseau!' This sugges- 
tion, so swiftly and deftly made, goes a good 



THE ARTIST. 75 

way towards explaining Ruskin's love of ex- 
haustive detail, the more accurately drawn and 
exquisitely finished the better; but it hardly 
tallies with the frequent breadth of handling 
and largeness of view to be found in his own 
work. Perhaps it was, in a measure, his early 
training in facsimile copying of great models 
that rendered him so precise, encouraged 
thereto by his own natural bent and genius for 
criticism and subtle analysis ; but no less was 
it his scientific knowledge and his cultivated 
accuracy that served him so well in the making 
of his innumerable sketches of natural phe- 
nomena and artistic shorthand notes of every 
sort of detail, to say nothing of his profound 
study and elaborate drawings of architecture — 
geometrical as well as picturesque. It is, per- 
haps, not too much to say that his " Glacier 
des Bossons, Chamouni " — in which the ice is 
inimitably represented creeping down the hill- 
side — with its exquisite drawing, its refinement 
and delicacy, and its beauty of sparkling colour, 
has never been surpassed in its own line by 
any artist however eminent. 

His actual masters in art, it has already been 
said, were J. D. Harding (who was the first to 
inspire him with the idea that there was some- 
thing more soulful and philosophic in art than 
appears upon the surface) and Copley Fielding. 



76 JOHN RUSK IN. 

Then came his love for Prout — he who above all 
others appreciated " Modern Painters " to the 
full when it first appeared. It was upon his 
manner that Ruskin loved to form his own, as 
may be seen in the early drawing of "The 
Cathedral Spire, Rouen " (reproduced on page 
81) and in many another work of his early 
years. Of this "Rouen/' by the way, pub- 
lished with two other drawings in the Maga- 
zine of Art in 1886, he wrote to me: "There 
ought to be a separate half-page of apology for 
the drawings of mine, in which the Rouen is a 
little bit too childish to show my proper early 
architectural power. All my really good draw- 
ings are too large — and most of them at 
Oxford ; but I should like you to give one of 
them, some day." 

He remained true to his " Proutism," which 
he cultivated so assiduously, to the end; for, 
speaking of his Brantwood drawings, he said : 
" Prout is one of the loves that always remain 
fresh to me ; sometimes I tire of Turner, but 
never of Prout." To what extent Turner was 
his idol it is not necessary here to insist: for 
Turner practically came for many years to be 
Ruskin's raison d'etre. Then followed his love 
for William Hunt and David Roberts ; and on 
the work of all these men his own style of art 
was founded. But his approval of Roberts was 




<k+JfrS-//\. ultL cJU-JL ^nM. 

t^2 (u*^> «V<jL& *-/ ty»W^, 



,,.,. djuM'dUjcA 












A PAGE OF ONE OF RUSKIN'S NOTE-BOOKS, MADE WHEN 
FIE WAS PREPARING "THE STONES OF VENICE." 

{By permission of Mrs. Arthur Severn.) 



THE ARTIST. 79 

greatly modified by time and by Roberts' own 
development and change. The story is still 
recounted with a chuckle how Ruskin once felt 
it necessary to print a rather severe criticism 
upon Roberts' work, but wrote a private note 
expressing the hope that it might make no 
difference to their friendship, and how the artist 
replied that when next he met him he would 
punch Ruskin's head, but hoped that that would 
in no way disturb their pleasant and cordial 
relations. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TEACHER. 

The teaching of John Ruskin might for 
convenience sake be divided into Art and 
General Teaching, which together form a 
synthetic philosophy, erratic enough at first 
sight to a superficial observer, but consistent 
and focussed in aim when properly under- 
stood. Codified as has been his teaching by 
Mr. Collingwood, Mr. Cook, and minor dis- 
ciples, it is simple and clear, its fundamental 
principles being honesty, piety, and sincerity in 
all things — in Art as in Ethics. A philosopher 
so impulsive and, at times, so hasty as Mr. 
Ruskin, writing more often, as it has been 
said, in the character of the pamphleteer 
than in that of the academist or pundit, 
naturally laid himself freely open to attack. 
Of this weakness advantage was from time 
to time fully taken by vigorous and pitiless 
assailants. A fighter of the Puritan sort — 
"as zealous, pugnacious, and self-sure a Prot- 
estant as you please," as he himself has 
expressed it — Ruskin hit hard, loving nothing 
80 




THE CATHEDRAL SPIRE, ROUEN. 

DRAWN BY RUSKIN, UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF PROUT. 
{By permission of Mrs. Arthur Severn.) 



THE TEACHER. 83 

so much as to pillory acknowledged wrongs 
and conventional rights. He thus made for 
himself more enemies than most men, though 
not so many, perhaps, as he would had 
people not regarded him as something of a 
prophet of old, or as a hot-tempered enthu- 
siast, whose seriously over-charged brain often 
carried him beyond the limits of soberer judg- 
ment and moderation. Rarely has an Eng- 
lishman of letters been the subject of such a 
slashing and abusive attack as Ruskin but a 
few years since was the victim of at the hands 
of the Quarterly Review, and many others 
joined with interest in the campaign of retalia- 
tion. The development of his ideas with time 
and maturity of judgment placed a ready 
weapon in the hands of his opponents, which 
they were not slow to use ; but more than once 
he has turned and emptied upon them with 
withering effect the vials of his wrath and 
scathing invective, which have few, if any, 
parallels in the language. 

Early in his career he assumed the "apos- 
tolic attitude " in respect, not only to art, but 
to the whole principles of life. Applying the 
results of his thoughts and doctrines, he came 
to set up Religion and Ethics as in direct oppo- 
sition to Science and Avarice ; and there we 
have the philosophy of his early life in a nut- 



84 JOHN RUSK IN. 

shell. He was not long before he modified 
this view to a sensible degree ; his Evangelical 
training began to fade before his kindlier senti- 
ments, and loosened its uncompromising grip. 
But from the beginning to the end his motto 
was " All great art is praise ; " and this he 
followed logically with the thesis that "the 
teaching of art is the teaching of all things." 
Art, he said, is to minister to a sense of beauty 
— a view which enabled him to bring nearly 
every subject within his net; and then, in- 
versely, he taught that beauty in all things — 
actual, aesthetic, moral, and ethical— that was 
the end and aim of life. It was to the propa- 
gation of this idea that he set his mind — that 
mind which Mazzini declared was the most 
analytical in Europe ; but the length to which 
he carried his arguments — such as that no man 
can be an architect who is not also a metaphy- 
sician — raised a veritable storm of criticism and 
dissent, upon which the young philosopher rode 
forward in triumph and delight. 

George Eliot — who said " I venerate him as 
one of the great teachers of the age : he teaches 
with the inspiration of the Hebrew prophet" — 
saw no reason to contest his two leading doc- 
trines — a Quixotic purity of commercial morality 
carried almost to the point of impracticability 
and stagnation, and a religious view of higher 




JOHN RUSKIN, 1S57. 

FROM THE PORTRAIT IN COLOURED CHALK BY GEORGE RICHMOND, R.A. 

{By permission of Arthur Severn, Esq., R.I.) 

{See p. 182.) 



THE TEACHER. 87 

art developed almost to the point of monastic 
exclusiveness and ethical fervour. His search 
after honesty and truth in Art enabled him to 
claim with pride that " it was left to me, and me 
alone, first to discern and then to teach — as far 
as in this hurried century any such thing can be 
taught — the excellence and supremacy of five 
great painters, despised until I spoke of them : 
Turner, Tintoret, Luini, Botticelli, and Carpac- 
cio." But his happiness in the analysis and 
establishment of past triumphs in art rendered 
him the more dejected in the contemplation 
of what he considered was its present tendency 
in England. " I have only stopped grumbling," 
he exclaimed, " because I find that grumbling 
is of no use. I believe that all the genius of 
modern artists is directed to tastes which are 
in vicious states of wealth in cities, and that, 
on the whole, they are in the service of a luxu- 
rious class who must be amused, or worse than 
amused. There is twenty times more effort 
than there used to be, far greater skill, but far 
less pleasure in the exercise of it in the artists 
themselves. I may say that my chief feeling 
is that things are going powerfully to the bad, 
but that there may be something — no one 
knows how or when — which may start up and 
check it. Look at those drawings of Turner 
on the wall — there is nothing wrong in them ; 



88 JOHN RUSKIN. 

but in every exhibition there is something 
wrong : the pictures are either too sketchy or 
too finished ; there is something wrong with 
the man — up to the very highest." 

In ordinary life he thought he discovered 
that manual labor and every effort of the body, 
to the exclusion of all mechanical assistance, 
was thrice-blessed, and the more highly sancti- 
fied the baser and more menial the office. 

" When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman? " 

must have been more than once in his mind. 
And thus it was that he learned the art of 
crossing-sweeping in London from a knight of 
the broom, and the art of road-making too. 
It speaks eloquently for his power of per- 
suasion and his sway over the affections of his 
pupils, that he brought the Oxford under- 
graduates, during his Slade professorship, to 
play the navvy, and with pick and spade to 
construct the Hincksey Road, to the delight 
and amusement of all the countryside. The 
road, I believe, is a very bad one, disgracefully 
so, save in that small portion to which Ruskin 
called in the professional help of his gardener ; 
but it was made, and that was enough for him. 
The story — perhaps an apochryphal one — goes 
in Oxford that Mr. Andrew Lang was one of 



THE TEACHER. 89 

the undergraduates ; who, with a lurking sus- 
picion as to the efficacy and Tightness of the 
whole business, as well as with a lively sense of 
the ludicrous, used to take his pickaxe and drive 
down in a hansom to the scene of operations. 

In fact, Muscle versus Machinery was one of 
the tenets of Ruskin's vital creed. He hated 
railways for three reasons : partly because they 
defaced the country and fouled the air ; partly 
because they were usually constructed rather 
as a speculation (the immorality of gambling!), 
with the sole view not to utility, but to profit 
(the immorality of sordidness !) ; and chiefly 
because they wiped out the good old-fashioned 
travelling, with patience and industry, with 
thew and muscle. Railways, he said, if rightly 
understood, are but a device to make the world 
smaller ; but he ignored the necessary corollary 
— that they made life longer and larger, at 
least to the traveller. When the abortive at- 
tempt was being made to pass a Bill for the 
Ambleside Railway through the Committee of 
the House, I had but to refer to the scheme 
which was to have brought the bane of his life 
into the very heart of the Lake district, to fire 
him at the bare mention of it. " Whenever I 
think of it," he cried warmly, "I get so angry 
that I begin to fear an attack of apoplexy. 
There is no hope for Ambleside ; the place is 

8* 



90 JOHN RUSK IN. 

sure to be ruined beyond all that people 
imagine. It is no use my writing to the Lon- 
don papers on the matter, because it merely 
centres in the question, have they money 
enough to fight in the House of Commons ? 
It does not matter what anybody says if the 
damaging party can pay expenses. There are 
perpetually people who are trying to get up 
railways in every direction, and as it now stands 
j they unfortunately can find no other place to 
make money from. But it is no use attacking 
them ; you might just as well expect mercy 
from a money-lender as expect them to listen 
to reason." Nor was his animosity towards 
the promoters in any way subdued by the fail- 
ure of the attempt in Parliament. Even the 
decoration of the railway stations he condemned 
as an impertinence and an outrage on the art 
of design that was disgraced by the lowliness 
of its mission. 

But Ruskin's hatred of railways was not so 
all-consuming nor so sweeping that he had no 
dislike and contempt left for that more recent 
form of mechanical self-transport — cycling, as he 
proved to a startled correspondent who sought 
for his opinion, and apparently his approval, on 
the subject. "I not only object," he wrote, 
" but am quite prepared to spend all my best 
1 bad language ' in reprobation of bi- tri- 4- 5- 6- 



THE TEACHER. 91 

or 7-cycles, and every other contrivance and 
invention for superseding human feet on God's 
ground. To walk, to run, to leap, and to 
dance are the Virtues of the human body, and 
neither to stride on stilts, wriggle on wheels, or 
dangle on ropes, and nothing in the training of 
the human mind with the body will ever super- 
sede the appointed God's ways of slow walking 
and hard working." 

Mr. William Morris rightly declared that 
Ruskin was the only man who, during the 
whole nineteenth century, made Art possible in 
England. Dr. Waldstein has placed him on 
an equal pedestal with Mathew x^rnold as an 
apostle of culture. And, further, by proclaim- 
ing his service in combating the severance of 
morality and economics, in " killing the fetish of 
the Quartier Latin," and in inducing the love 
and study of nature and landscape-painting, he 
has awarded Ruskin the palm he so passion- 
ately sought for — the admission that he reached 
his goal. In short, as has been said, Ruskin 
stood midway between the religious and scien- 
tific lines of thought — as a theistic philosopher. 
And it is claimed for him that he inaugurated 
the era of scientific and methodical art-criticism, 
and ranged himself beside Carlyle, Emerson, 
and Hegel against the advancing materialism of 
the day. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE EDUCATIONIST. 

Upon no subject, even upon art or railways, 
did Ruskin entertain stronger views than upon 
education — more especially upon the education 
of the very young. Laying down primarily 
that little children should be taught or shown 
nothing that is sad and nothing that is ugly, he 
protested with all his vigour against the blind 
Three R's-system of all school education — 
particularly that of the School Board. And 
he further set his face against what he believed 
was the latter-day tendency of scientific or eco- 
nomic study amongst our youth, to the end and 
conclusion " that their fathers were apes and 
their mothers winkles ; that the world began in 
accident, and will end in darkness; that honour 
is a folly, ambition a virtue, charity a vice, 
poverty a crime, and rascality the means of all 
wealth and the sum of all wisdom." As usual, 
his earnestness in asseveration and felicity in 
expression carried him a little too far; but it 
certainly presented his views with considerable 

accuracy. 
92 



THE EDUCATIONIST. 93 

Few people applied to him in vain for 
assistance and advice on the subject of school- 
teaching ; and with his advice there often 
came something more substantial in the way 
of materials for object-lessons. The Cork 
High School for Girls is one of the several 
establishments which benefited in this way, 
receiving a gift of minerals of high value 
accompanied by a characteristic descriptive 
catalogue. To Mrs. Magnussen, again, Ruskin 
expressed the deep interest he felt in her 
high school for girls in Ireland, and besought 
her to "teach your children to be cheerful, 
busy, and honest; teach them sewing, music, 
and cookery; and if they want bonnets from 
Paris — why, you'll have to send for them." 
And many a time the village school of Conis- 
ton has known his presence during school 
hours, and reaped advantage and amusement 
from his kindly interference. 

As soon as the child has been taught to learn, 
not only with its eyes and ears, but with its lips 
and tongue and skin (the latter by the appointed 
daily washing, to say nothing of " thrashing — 
delicately — on due occasion"), its time is to 
be gradually occupied with the teaching of the 
natural sciences, as against mere reading and 
writing. Physical science, botany, the elements 
of music, astronomy, and zoology — these are 



JOHN RUSK IN 

the subjects to be included in a system which 
is to know no over-pressure, and which, by its 
course of study, precludes the possibility of 
writing folly for the attraction of other infantile 
fools, or the reading of pestilential popular 
literature- and " penny dreadfuls" to the 
reader's ruin. Drawing and history, accord- 
ing to the Ruskinian system, were to be com- 
pulsory subjects. The school-house, with 
garden, playground, and cultivable land round 
it, wherever possible, should have workshops 
— a carpenter's and a potter's — a children's 
library, where scholars who want to read 
might teach themselves without troubling 
the masters ; and " a sufficient laboratory 
always, in which shall be specimens of 
all common elements of natural substances, 
and where chemical, optical, and pneumatic 
experiments may be shown." And to these 
subjects, others— which should not be extras : 
"the laws of Honour, the habit of Truth, 
the Virtue of Humility, and the Happiness of 
Love." 

And coming later to the ordinary University 
course and University teaching, Ruskin be- 
sought his students to confine themselves to 
the regular curriculum. But as for languages 
— their own and foreign-— he told them to 
learn the former at home, and the others in 



THE EDUCATIONIST. 95 

the various countries ; " and, after they've 
learned all they want, learn wholesomely to 
hold their tongues, except on extreme occa- 
sions, in all languages whatsoever." 



CHAPTER VII. 

HIS VIEW OF THINGS. 

Ruskin's originality and invariable happi- 
ness of expression drew, perhaps, undue public 
attention to his versatility and views of things 
in general, and he was listened to with pleasure 
by adversaries, as by friends and followers. 
His theory of political economy was too ideal 
to be acceptable to the work-a-day world ; yet 
his "Time and Tide" and " Ethics of the Dust" 
gained no small share of approval from non- 
capitalists. With Palmerston, Gladstone, and 
Disraeli, Ruskin contested for these opinions 
in vigorous conversation ; though, as he him- 
self admitted, with but' little effect. For 
Palmerston gently remonstrated with him ; 
Gladstone hotly argued, and Disraeli cyni- 
cally chaffed him: but Ruskin held on — the 
precise attitude that might have been expected 
from the character and dispositions of the four 
men. On this subject he remained firm ; " my 
political teaching," he said, " has never changed 
in a single thought or word, and, being that 
of Homer and Plato, is little likely to do so, 
though not acceptable to a country whose 
9 6 




JOHN RUSKIN, 1866. 

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY ELLIOTT & PRY. 



HIS VIEW OF THINGS, 99 

milkmaids cannot make butter, nor her black- 
smiths bayonets." 

Ardent in all things, he was an ardent, 
though inactive, politician ; but he was strongly 
opposed to government by party, being con- 
vinced that the ablest men should be in the 
positions for which they were best suited. 
"I care no more for Mr. D'Israeli or Mr. 
Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with 
the drones going by steam," he once wrote ; 
" but I hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, 
and, with Carlyle, I stand, we two alone now 
in England, for God and the Queen." This 
is on all-fours with the sentiment he once 
imparted to me, and which at the time it 
was my duty to make known to the world : 
" There is one political opinion I do enter- 
tain, and that is that Mr. Gladstone is an old 
wind-bag, who uses his splendid gifts of 
oratory not for the elucidation of a subject, 
but for its vaporisation in a cloud of words " 
— a sentiment, he told me afterwards, which 
had given the greatest offence to Miss Glad- 
stone, of whom he was so fond, and now she 
wouldn't look at him ! "I am not a Liberal 
— quite the Polar contrary of that. I am, 
and my father was before me, a violent Tory 
of the old school (Walter Scott's school) ; " 
and again, "I am a violent Illiberal, but it 









ioo JOHN RUSKIN. 

does not follow that I must be a Conserva- 
tive. I want to keep the fields of England 
green and her cheeks red." 

In one of his lighter moods he wrote to a 
friend concerning the proposed erection of a 
new public office : — " If I were he [the archi- 
tect] I would build Lord P an office with 

all the capitals upside down, and tell him it was 
in the Greek style, inverted, to express typi- 
cally Government by party — up to-day, down 
to-morrow." And on another occasion : — " I 
beg of you, so far as you think of me, not 
to think of me as a Tory, or as in any wise 
acknowledging party principles ; " and, finally, 
declaring himself what amounts to a limited 
Home Ruler, he piously proclaimed himself a 
believer in " the minority of One ! " 

There seems to be good ground for the be- 
lief that, had not Art claimed Ruskin for her 
own, his love of Nature would have been di- 
verted into scientific channels. Dr. Buckland 
and James Forbes had done much with him, 
and as he believed and said with perfect can- 
dour, he might have become the first geologist 
in Europe. Geology, mineralogy, meteorology 
— glacier movements, mountains, rocks, clouds, 
and perspective, birds and plants, all severally 
engaged his attention, and to good purpose 
enlisted his highest powers. But for all that, 



HIS VIEW OF THINGS. 101 

he hated mathematics ; and having once learned, 
with the rest of the children at the Coniston 
school, how much seven-and-twenty pounds of 
bacon would come to at ninepence farthing a 
pound, "with sundry the like marvellous conse- 
quences of the laws of numbers," he stopped 
the mistress and diverted the delighted chil- 
dren's attention to object-lessons more pictu- 
resque, and, as he believed, more interesting and 
useful. Yet his contributions to science are 
not altogether insignificant, and Mr. Tyndall 
had cause to wince under his lash when he 
opposed the glacier-theory of James Forbes, 
and, as Ruskin himself told me with unusual 
bitterness, "put back the glacier-theory twenty 
years and more — a theory which had been de- 
cided before that conceited, careless schoolboy 
was born ! Scientists ! " he cried, " but not men 
of science. They are not students of science, but 
dilettanti in the enjoyment of its superficial as- 
pects. They do not examine and analyse the 
milk ; they only sip at the cream, and then 
chatter about it. They are of the race that say 
' Keltic ' for ' Celtic,' and ' Keramic ' for ' Ce- 
ramic,' at once the makers and the followers of 
fashion in Science, and not, as they should be, 
the servants of God, and the humble masters 
of the universe." The Darwinian theory, as I 
have already said, was in a measure hateful to 

9* 



102 JOHN RUSK IN. 

him ; yet few men he esteemed more than the 
author of it. To the last he remembered with 
delight the visits of the great naturalist to 
Brantwood, and was perhaps not a little grate- 
ful for the tact with which all reference to 
debateable matters was carefully avoided. 

In religion Ruskin may be described as a 
Broad Churchman ; earnest and pious, but no 
bigot, as the following passage, extracted from 
a private letter, will show : — " If people in this 
world would but teach a little less religion and 
a little more common honesty, it would be 
much more to everybody's purpose — and to 
God's." As a child he was brought up in the 
Evangelical faith, but soon became more catho- 
lic and indulgent, and looked with horror on 
the more intolerant attitude of Protestantism 
or Puritanism, and with scorn upon sects and 
schisms alike and their belittling quarrels. 
Still, as before and later, religion in its larger 
sense was the forerunning and guiding princi- 
ple of his life — the passion that directed every 
act and moulded every thought. Love, Faith, 
Charity, and Honour were the four boundaries 
of his Church — a Church which was broad 
enough to cover every noble mind and every 
honest heart. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LETTER- WRITER. 

One of the most delightful of Ruskin's 

talents was that of letter-writing, his natural 

bent for which was developed and perfected by 

continual practice. But his art was not that of 

the great literary epistolographers. It aimed 

less, in point of fact, at literary quality and 

formal composition (though it did not less for 

that reason hit the mark) than at vivacity of 

manner and frank expression of his thoughts 

as they took form in his brain and bubbled 

sparkling and flowing from his pen — now in 

the ripple of boyish playfulness, now in the 

stiller sweep of philosophic thought, and now 

again in the torrent of hot indignation that 

overwhelmed his adversaries in their flood. 

To the public journals he was a prolific 

correspondent, from the time when, in 1847 

and again in 1853, he addressed long letters 

to the Times on the dangers threatening the 

National Gallery — to the dissipation of which 

dangers he was able long years afterwards to 

testify — down to a quite recent period. The 

103 



104 JOHN RUSKIN. 

Times, but particularly the Daily Telegraph 
and the Pall Mall Gazette, were his favourite 
newspaper channels of communication with 
the public, but the Morning Post, the Man- 
chester Examiner and Times, the Leeds Mer- 
cury, the \ Scotsman, the Manchester City News, 
the Reader, the Critic, the Literary Gazette, 
the Monetary Gazette, and other journals were 
selected by him from time to time for the 
exposition of his views upon almost every 
subject within the extended range of his 
philosophy. Yet if he was a prolific news- 
paper letter-writer it must not be imagined 
that he was necessarily, therefore, a rapid one. 
On the contrary, he more than once, to me 
as well as to others, remarked upon the labour 
which the inditing and publishing of such pro- 
ductions entailed upon him. In a post- 
script to a letter addressed to the editor of 
the Pall Mall Gazette in 1887, Mr - Ruskin 
wrote : — 

"I have not written this letter with my usual care, for 
I am at present tired and sad ; but you will enough gather 
my meaning in it ; and may I pray your kindness, in any 
notice you may grant in continuation of * Prseterita,' to 
contradict the partly idle, partly malicious rumours which 
I find have got into other journals, respecting my state of 
health this spring. Whenever I write a word that my 
friends don't like, they say I am crazy; and never con- 
sider what a cruel and wicked form of libel they thus pro- 



THE LETTER-WRITER. 105 

voke against the work of an old age in all its convictions 
antagonistic to the changes of the times, and in all its com- 
fort oppressed by them ;" 

— a most pathetic and, as the Editor truly 
commented, " sad undernote of weariness " in 
respect to a charge to which all great original 
thinkers have been exposed at the hands of 
commonplace people " from St. Paul to Gen- 
eral Gordon." 

All these newspaper letters, from 1841 up 
to 1880, together with a few others, were re- 
printed in " Arrows of the Chace," wherein, it 
must be remarked, the writer asserts, with in- 
explicable self-contradiction, that most of them 
were " written hastily," though he admits that 
they cost him much trouble. And he further 
declared, what, indeed, every man can see for 
himself, that in these letters, " designed for his 
country's help," there is not one word which 
"has been warped by interest nor weakened 
by fear," and that they are "as pure from 
selfish passion as if they were spoken already 
out of another world." 

It is clear that letter-writing came with 
singular ease to Ruskin, for it allowed him 
an unconventionality of composition and ex- 
pression and a forcefulness of diction that 
would, perhaps, have been less permissible in 
the more customary methods of essay writing. 



106 JOHN RUSKIN. 

For this reason, doubtless, "Time and Tide 
by Weare and Tyne " was frankly thrown 
into epistolary form, or left in it, precisely as 
the five-and- twenty letters of which the book 
is composed were indited to Mr. Thomas 
Dixon, of Sunderland ; while " The Elements 
of Drawing," and even " Fors Clavigera," were 
in like manner issued in Ruskin's favourite 
form of public address. 

Apart from his letters immediately intended 
for publication in the newspapers, there were 
those he addressed to the comparatively un- 
known correspondents who sought his help 
and advice in their private affairs, or inquired 
his opinions upon every sort of subject of 
public curiosity ; and those, again, which he 
distributed with so generous a hand among 
his private friends and relations. How many 
of all these letters have found their way into 
print it is unnecessary to point out or inquire. 
Ruskin's own general statement that " I never 
write what I would not allow to be published," 
and his general declaration, duly printed in the 
newspapers, that all were free to publish every 
letter he ever wrote, "so that they print the 
whole of them," was confirmed by him in a 
characteristic letter which he wrote to James 
Smetham, and which was printed in the fasci- 
nating volume of " Letters " of that artist. " I 



THE LETTER-WRITER, 107 

have had," wrote Smetham on one occasion, 
" some kind letters from Ruskin, one giving me 
leave to print anywhere or anyhow any opinion 
he may have expressed about my work in 
private letters, in bits or wholes, or how I like, 
and concluding by a very characteristic sen- 
tence : ' I never wrote a private letter to any 
human being which I would not let a bill- 
sticker chalk up six feet high on Hyde Park 
wall, and stand myself in Piccadilly and say 
" I did it." ' " Thus it is that Ruskin encour- 
aged a system of general publicity which cer- 
tainly has done his reputation no harm, while 
it enlivened the columns of the public press 
with a pyrotechnic sequence of letters, delight- 
fully and often enough fervently expressed — 
contributions for which newspaper-readers felt 
themselves duly grateful. 

Of the private letters, the most notable 
collection is that before, referred to, which 
was addressed to Miss Beever — the Younger 
Lady of Thwaite, to whom the world is in- 
debted for the charming selection from Modern 
Painters known as " Frondes Agrestes." A 
smaller selection was more recently published 
for private circulation by Mr. Ellis, the book- 
seller — a collection containing much that is 
pleasant and interesting, bearing chiefly on 
Ruskin's knowledge and love of books, but 



108 JOHN RUSK IN. 

hardly edited with the solicitude demanded 
by the reputation of a great writer. Few men 
declare themselves completely in their literary 
work, so that the publication of their letters 
is always .looked to for the explanation of 
otherwise inexplicable problems presented by 
their character, to throw light upon unguessed 
motives, or even to tear from their face the 
mask that the heroes have laboured all their 
life to mould and wear with the ease of 
truth. With Ruskin it is different. His 
writings declare the man in his weakness as 
in his strength, simply and fully, drawing a 
careful outline, so to speak, that leaves little 
to be filled into the portrait, and requires no 
further evidence to enable his fellow-men to 
form their judgment. It is chiefly confirmatory 
evidence that his letters afford — presented with 
a light hand to fill in the main lines laid down 
in hts books — illustrating, developing, and rep- 
resenting the author in a stronger light, only 
a good deal more light-hearted or more de- 
pressed ; and at the same time bringing into 
greater relief the dominating qualities of charity 
and love which those who knew him best saw 
oftenest and esteemed highest. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE POET. 

Ruskin, as has already been said, was in- 
tended for the Church. His mother — strict 
Evangelical soul — devoutly hoped that her 
son would become a Bishop ; his father 
firmly believed he would be a poet. And 
though Ruskin belied both prophecies, it must 
be admitted that he gave ample ground for 
the paternal conviction. His facility in verse- 
making was amazing, and from those tender 
years when, still a baby, he wrote the imagina- 
tive lines beginning — 

" Papa, how pretty those icicles are, 
That are seen so near, that are seen so far," 

he, in a short time, developed such fluency 
that few writers of verse of any age could 
excel him in the direction of fatal " facility." 
His literary prose style, as we have seen, had 
been founded on the Bible and Dr. Johnson, 
tempered by Carlyle ; his poetic Muse was 
nourished on Byron, guided by Wordsworth, 
and modified by Scott. As he himself wrote in 
a tone of apology to Hogg, the Ettrick Shep- 

10 109 



no JOHN RUSK IN. 

herd, when but fifteen years of age : " I fear 
you are too lenient a critic, and that Mr. Mar- 
shall is in the right when he says I have imi- 
tated Scott and Byron. I have read Byron 
with wonder, and Scott with delight ; they have 
caused me* many a day-dream and night-dream, 
and it is difficult to prevent yourself from imi- 
tating what you admire. I can only say that 
the imitation was unintentional, but I fear, with 
me, almost unavoidable." Yet, to his infinite 
credit, it must be confessed that he early saw 
that his drift into art-criticism carried him into 
the right stream. Nevertheless, although the 
feu sacre burned brightly within him, although 
he heard on all sides that none had written 
such poetic prose as he, and although his sensi- 
tiveness to nature and beauty was universally 
allowed him, he soon recognised that, as with 
Lord .Lytton, poetry was to him but a will-o'- 
the-wisp — to be wooed and followed, but never, 
like Fata Morgana, to be seized. 

Yet, though he thus tacitly admitted, while 
yet a stripling, that verse was not the weapon 
with which he was to conquer the recognition 
of the world, he made no objection to the re- 
publication of his poems by Mr. Collingwood. 
Their issue, in splendid garb, with many admir- 
able facsimiles of the Master's most beautiful 
drawings with pencil-point and brush, will be 




JOHN RUSKIN, 1876. 

SKETCHED IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY BY GEORGES PILOTELLE. 
{By permission of Mr. JVoseda, the owner of the copyright of the etching.) 

{See p. 186.) 



THE POET. 113 

fresh in the memory of the reader. It might 
be said, and not without truth, that the pictures 
formed the chief artistic value of the volumes ; 
for, while the poems — with all their pretty 
daintiness and occasional power — savoured a 
good deal of the efforts of the precocious poet, 
the pictures were full of richness of fancy, 
exquisiteness of touch, and true beauty — the 
attributes of natural genius. The humour 
which distinguishes his unfinished autobiog- 
raphy, " Prseterita," is often slyly pointed at his 
youthful indiscretions — poetical and otherwise ; 
but in his " Collected Poems " the verses were 
put forth with a seriousness — almost a solem- 
nity — which is a little out of balance with the 
subject. For, while the verse-lover may smile 
in sympathy with his dainty fancies, or fires, 
maybe, with noble suggestions, or nods his 
head gently in time to its musical cadences, the 
critic can but regret that a maturer judgment 
permitted them to go forth as the poetical 
works of a great man, for all the exquisite 
beauty of their pictorial accompaniments. He 
brought as a sacrifice the harvest of his intel- 
lectual wild oats to the altar of public opinion ; 
but it is doubtful if he cared for the verdict — if 
he ever knew of it. As in other instances, his 
shaft had missed its aim. Just as a comedian 
yearns for recognition as an actor of tragedy, 

h 10* 



114 JOHN RUSK IN. 

so Ruskin ever sought for some other judgment 
than that which an admiring public chose to 
pass upon him. The people proclaim him an 
art-critic, and he would be taken for a political 
economist ; the artists welcome him as a writer, 
and he would be taken for an art-preacher; 
Mr. Tyndall respected him as a controversial- 
ist, when he would be taken for a man of 
science ; and, lastly, we find him applauded as 
an artist when he would be taken for a poet ! 
But it must be remembered that it was from 
his young and hopeful heart that these poems 
chiefly flowed, even when he set himself — as he 
once amusingly observed — " in a state of mag- 
nificent imbecility to write a tragedy on a Vene- 
tian subject, in which Venice and love were to 
be described as never had been thought of be- 
fore ! " If, however, for no other reason than 
that it is the frank utterance of a young and 
gentle spirit, his verse — so sweetly, so nobly 
conceived — is to be welcomed beyond its inher- 
ent merit. And, as it fell out, his song — pub- 
lished just as he was vanishing from the world 
— became in truth the song of the swan 



CHAPTER X. 
RUSKIN AND GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 

There was no pleasanter phase of Ruskin's 
character, as has been already said, than his 
charity, delicately dispensed, especially when 
the recipient was worthy of his gift, and at the 
same time claimed his respect. An example 
in point is Ruskin's connection with George 
Cruikshank in the artist's later days. The 
relation of the circumstances at an interesting 
period of their connection affords a plain in- 
stance of the generosity of Ruskin, no less 
than of his refusal to allow his sympathy of 
sentiment to overcloud his faculty of criticism. 

Many a time had Ruskin borne testimony to 
Cruikshank's genius as a designer, as well as 
to his almost unrivalled skill and facility as an 
etcher. 

" If ever [he wrote] you happen to meet with two vol- 
umes of Grimm's * German Stories,' which were illustrated 
by George Cruikshank long ago, pounce upon them in- 
stantly ; the etchings in them are the finest things, next to 
Rembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done since 
etching was invented." 

And again : — 

"5 



n6 JOHN RUSKIA 

" They are of quite sterling and admirable art, in a class 
precisely parallel in elevation to the character of the tales 
they illustrate . . . unrivalled in masterfulness of touch 
since Rembrandt (in some qualities of delineation un- 
rivalled even by him). To make somewhat enlarged copies 
of them, looking at them through a magnifying glass, and 
never putting two lines where Cruikshank has put only one, 
would be an exercise in decision and severe drawing which 
would leave afterwards little to be learned in schools." 

Of course, it is not only, or even mainly, 
upon the Grimm plates that Cruikshank's repu- 
tation rests as an etcher and a humorist of the 
highest order ; for in several of his caricatures 
— coarse as many of the subjects may be — 
there are a boldness and a freedom of compo- 
sition and execution which are perfectly aston- 
ishing, even to the expert connoisseur in these 
things. But it was always the Grimm plates — 
executed about the year 1824 — that were upper- 
most in Ruskin's mind. More than forty years 
later Ruskin conceived an idea, partly in order 
to be of use to Cruikshank — who (greatly 
through his own fault, be it said) never knew 
what assured prosperity meant — and partly to 
please little children, whom he loved so well. 
This was to place before the little people a 
book of fairy-tales — fairy-tales just such as they 
should be, and adorned with pictures exactly 
fitting the stories. Not until he issued " Dame 
Wiggins of Lee," in 1885, did he even par- 



RUSKIN AND GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 117 

tially fulfil his wish; but in 1866 he went to 
considerable trouble to carry his object into 
execution. On the 27th of March he wrote to 
his secretary from Denmark Hill : — 

" How curious all that is about the Grimm plates. I 
wish you would ask Cruikshank whether he thinks he could 
execute some designs from fairy-tales — of my choosing, of 
the same size, about, as these vignettes, and with a given 
thickness of etching line ; using no fine line anywhere? " 

The reservation was a wise one, for the 
vigour and excellence of Cruikshank's etched 
line had degenerated sadly as he reached mid- 
dle life. On the 2nd of the following month, 
full of his new project, and fully decided in his 
mind as to what he wanted and meant to have, 
Ruskin wrote again : — 

" I don't want to lose an hour in availing myself of Mr. 
Cruikshank's kindness, but I am puzzled, as I look at the 
fairy tales within my reach, at their extreme badness. The 
thing I shall attempt will be a small collection of the best 
and simplest I can find, re-touched a little, with Edward's 
help, and with as many vignettes as Mr. Cruikshank will 
do for me. One of the stories will certainly be the Pied 
Piper of Hamelin — but, I believe, in prose. I can only 
lay hand just now on Browning's rhymed rendering of it, 
but that will do for the subject. I want the piper taking 
the children to Koppelberg Hill — a nice little rout of 
funny little German children — not too many for clearness 
of figure — and a bit of landscape with the raven opening 
in the hillside — but all simple and bright and clear — with 
broad lines : the landscape in ' Curdken running after his 



u8 JOHN RUSKIN. 

Hat,' for instance — or the superb bit with the cottage in 
'Thumbling picked up by the Giant/ are done with the 
kind of line I want ; and I should like the vignette as small 
as possible, full of design and neat, not a labour of light 
and shade. 

" I would always rather have two small vignettes than one 
large one. And I will give any price that Mr. Cruikshank 
would like, but he must forgive me for taking so much upon 
me as to make the thick firm line a condition, for I cannot 
bear to see his fine hand waste itself in scratching middle 
tints and covering mere spaces, as in the Cinderella and 
other later works. The * Peewit ' vignette, with the 
people jumping into the lake, I have always thought one 
of the very finest things ever done in pure line. It is so 
bold, so luminous, so intensely real, so full of humour, 
and expression, and character to the last dot. 

" I send you my Browning marked with the subject at 
page 315, combining one and two; and, perhaps, in the 
distance there might be the merest suggestion of a Town 
Council — 3. . but I leave this wholly to Mr. Cruik- 
shank's feeling. 

" Please explain all this to him, for I dare not write to 
him these impertinences without more really heartfelt 
apology than I have time, or words, to-day to express. 
" Ever affectionately yours, 

"J. Ruskin." 

On the 7th of the same month Ruskin re- 
turned to the subject : — 

"I was so busy and tired yesterday I couldn't write 
another note. That is capital and very funny about the 
Pied Piper. Your subjects are all good as good can be, 
but I doubt we can't afford more than one to each story, 
and the final one is here the best. Please tell me of any 
other stories and subjects that chance to you." 



RUSKIN AND GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 119 

Two days later, with the jovial spirit of a 
Cheeryble Brother strong within him, he wrote 
again : — 

" I do not know anything that has given me so much 
pleasure for a long time as the thought of the feeling with 
which Cruikshank will read this list of his committee. 
You're a jolly fellow — you are, and I'm very grateful to 
you, and ever affectionately yours, 

"J. Ruskin. 

"I enclose Cruikshank's letter, which is very beautiful. 
I think you must say ^100 (a hundred) for me." 

And on the 1 6th of April he wrote : — 

"Letter just received — so many thanks. It's delightful 
about Cruikshank." 

So, everything being settled, the artist went 
steadily to work, and in the month of July fol- 
lowing, Ruskin wrote with enthusiasm : — 

"I can only say to-day that I'm delighted about all 
these Cruikshank matters, and if the dear old man will do 
anything he likes more from the old Grimms it will be 
capital. Edward and Morris and you and I will choose 
the subjects together." 

Meanwhile he saw and became enthusiastic 
over other work of the great etcher's, and once 
more wrote to his secretary, on the 2nd of 
September, to tell him so : — 

"I am wholly obliged to you for these Cruikshanks. 
The Jack Shepherd [sic] one is quite awful, and a miracle 
of skill and command of means. The others are all splen- 
did in their way ; the morning one with the far-away street 



120 JOHN RUSK IN. 

I like the best. The officials with the children are glorious 
too ; withering, if one understands it. But who does, or 
ever did ? The sense of loss and rarity of all good art — 
until we are better people — increases in us daily." 

A few days later he suggested : — 

"Wouldn't Cruikshank choose himself subjects out of 
Grimm ? If not, to begin with, the old soldier who has 
lost his way in a wood, comes to a cottage with a light in 
it shining through the trees. At its door is a witch spin- 
ning, of whom he asks lodging. She says, ' He must dig 
her garden, then.' " 

At this time a missing etching was returned 
to him, and he wrote : — 

"I forgot to thank you for the Cruikshank plate of 
fairies. I lost it out of the book when I was a boy, and 
am heartily glad to have it in again. The facsimiles are 
most interesting, as examples of the /^-measurably little 
things on which life and death depend in work — a fatal 
truth — forced on me too sharply, long ago, in my own en- 
deavours to engrave Turner." 

The facsimiles referred to here were an 
extraordinary series of reproductions — ''for- 
geries " some collectors chose to declare them 
— which a French artist made of the Grimm 
plates. So fine are they that it is only by one 
or two minor points, as well as by the colour 
of the ink in which they are printed, that the 
difference between the genuine plates and the 
copies can be detected. And this, it must be 
remembered, was long before the means of 



RUSKIN AND GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 121 

photographing a design upon copper was dis- 
covered. Disappointment, however, was soon 
to follow. The plates were delivered ; but 
brought the following charming letter from Rus- 
kin — a letter as truthful in its criticism as it is 
gentle and happy in its choice of expression : — 

" The etching will not do. The dear old man has 
dwelt on serious and frightful subjects, and cultivated his 
conscientiousness till he has lost his humour. He may 
still do impressive and moral subjects, but I know by this 
group of children that he can do fairy tales no more. 

"I think he might quite well do still what he would 
feel it more his duty to do — illustrations of the misery of the 
streets of London. He knows that, and I would gladly 
purchase the plates at the same price. 

" Ever affectionately yours, J. Ruskin. 

"Give my dear love to Mr. Cruikshank, and say, if he 
had been less kind and good, his work now would have 
been fitter for wayward children, but that his lessons of 
deeper import will be incomparably more precious if he 
cares to do them. But he must not work while in the 
country." 

Disappointed as he was, Ruskin determined 
that the artist should not share his mortifica 
tion, and on the 19th November he wrote : — 

"I am going to write to Rutter [Ruskin's hotnme 
d'affaires] to release Cruikshank from the payment of that 
hundred — he gave some bonds which may be useful to 
him, and I shall put the hundred down, as I said I would, 
to the testimonial." 

The sequel of the plates is not without 

F II 



122 JOHN RUSKIN. 

interest as having drawn from Ruskin a later 
criticism on Cruikshank' s work which may fitly 
be recorded here. As a Cruikshank collector, 
I was aware that the two plates of the Pied 
Piper and -the Old Soldier had disappeared 
from Ruskin' s possession ; and having further 
ascertained that some of his late secretary's 
effects had long before found their way to the 
hands of various dealers, I applied myself to 
discover them, if possible. By good fortune I 
lighted upon them, nearly twenty years after 
they were executed and years after they were 
" lost," and I had the pleasure of placing them 
in the possession of their rightful owner. In 
a letter acknowledging the receipt of them he 
wrote : — 

"It was precisely because Mr. Cruikshank could not re- 
turn to the manner of the Grimm plates, but etched too 
finely and shaded too much, that our project came to an 
end. I have no curiosity about the plates ... I 
never allow such things to trouble me, else I should have 
vexation enough. There's a lovely plate of " Stones of 
Venice "—folio size — lost these twenty years ! 
" Ever faithfully yours, 

"J. Ruskin." 

Writing a few days later, on the 21st 
January, 1884, in response to a suggestion of 
mine that his latest criticism on Cruikshank 
might be interesting to the public, he wrote :■ — 



RUSKIN AND GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 123 

"It is a pleasure to me to answer your obliging letter 
with full permission to use my note on Cruikshank in any 
way you wish, and to add, if you care to do so, the expres- 
sion of my perpetually increasing wonder at the fixed love 
of ugliness in the British soul which renders the collective 
works of three of our greatest men — Hogarth, Bewick, 
and Cruikshank — totally unfit for the sight of women and 
children, and fitter for the furniture of gaols and pigstyes 
than of the houses of gentlemen and gentlewomen. 

"In Cruikshank the disease was connected with his 
incapacity of colour ; but Hogarth and Bewick could both 
paint. 

"It may be noticed in connection with the matter that 
Gothic grotesque sculpture is far more brutal in England 
than among the rudest continental nations ; and the singu- 
lar point of distraction is that such ugliness on the Conti- 
nent is only used with definitely vicious intent by de- 
graded artists ; but with us it seems the main amusement 
of the virtuous ones ! 

" Ever faithfully yours, 

"J. RUSKIN." 

There can be no doubt that Ruskin's con- 
demnation of the ugliness or extreme impro- 
priety in some of the works of the artists 
he named is entirely just. But that must be 
borne in mind which Ruskin, in his impatience 
of everything that was vile or ugly, unfairly 
ignored — that the works he denounces were 
produced, with all their coarseness and vulgarity 
of sentiment and colour, to suit the taste and 
satisfy the demand of our great-grandfathers, 
with whom grossness often passed for wit and 



124 JOHN RUSK IN. 

extravagance for humour ; and that it was their 
very aptitude for distortion and for investing 
their subject with "brutality" which enabled 
such lesser lights as Williams, Woodward, and 
Bunbury to take equal rank in our ancestors' 
estimation with giants such as Gillray, Row- 
landson, and " the inimitable George Cruik- 
shank." 



CHAPTER XL 

BRANTWOOD. 

Brantwood, the chosen lake-side home of 
Ruskin during the last quarter-century of his 
life, occupies one of the most favoured spots in 
all England. Set in the background of a half- 
encircling wood of exquisite grace and mystic 
beauty, as seen in the green half-light of its 
tranquil shade, and protected from the east 
winds by the open moorland that stretches away 
still further to the rear, it faces a long slope of 
lawn that sweeps down to Coniston Waters 
edge. 

Behind — the moor, with the water of its 

overflowing wells running swiftly down the 

rocks with all the fuss of a real cascade ; and 

the exalted rock of " Naboth," rising on the 

outskirts of the estate, which Ruskin loved to 

climb that he might gaze upon a wider view ; 

and then, still higher, the great expanse of green 

and purple moor which game-birds haunt down 

to the very limits of the wood itself. And at 

its foot the fishing pond and the soft green turf 

of the natural amphitheatre. 

ii* 125 



126 JOHN RUSK IN. 

In front — the narrow lake, sparkling in the 
sun and blue as the waters of the Rhone or of 
Thun, or grey and ruffling to the breeze that 
sweeps swiftly across the lake, tossing Mr. 
Severn's sailing boats as they lie at anchor 
close by the little creek, or thwarting them and 
their skipper as they seek their moorings on a 
squally day. Then the rising banks beyond oi 
broken green, with white-faced houses blinking 
behind their trees, and the quiet, grey village 
nestling away to the right ; and the Old Man 
of Coniston himself, towering above the smaller 
hills that close like guards around his knees. 

To the left, the road that skirts the shore 
loses itself quickly among the trees ; but the 
full length of the lake itself is seen away down 
to where the water gleams beyond Peel Island 
five miles and more away. 

Upon such a view, with its range of hills 
draped in hanging cloud and clinging mists, or 
clear cut against the summer sky, would Rus- 
kin stand and gaze, peering beneath his hand 
when the light was strong, many times a day ; 
never tiring of the ever-changing scene, and 
finding in it a reminiscence of his beloved Alps, 
and deriving real consolation when his days of 
travel were complete. 

In the midst of this land of delight Brant- 
wood stands, once the house of Mr. W. J. 



BRANTWOOD. 129 

Linton, the great wood-engraver. How Ruskin 
acquired it, he has himself amusingly told: 
"Then Brantwood was offered me, which I 
bought, without seeing it, for fifteen hundred 
pounds (the fact being that I have no time to 
see things, and must decide at a guess, or not 
act at all). Then the house at Brantwood — a 
mere shed of rotten timber and loose stone — had 
to be furnished. . . The repairs also prov- 
ing worse than complete rebuilding. . . I 
got myself at last seated at my tea-table, one 
summer, with my view of the lake — for a net 
four thousand pounds all told. I afterwards 
built a lodge, nearly as big as the house, for a 
married servant, and cut and terraced a kitchen 
garden cut out of the ' steep wood ' — another 
two thousand transforming themselves thus 
into 'utilities embodied in material objects.'' 
So that he estimated the value in 1877 at five 
thousand pounds. But since then Brantwood, 
with its new buildings, has grown steadily up 
the hill, and wells have been sunk and the 
place improved with new rooms south and 
north and east, until it distinctly " rambles," 
comfortably and cheerfully, more than ever it 
" rambled " before. 

Entering from the private road, which after- 
wards disappears through an archway beneath 
the house and the outbuildings, the visitor finds 



— ' 



130 JOHN RUSK IN. 

himself in a square hall, remarkable chiefly 
for being hung with cartoon-drawings by Mr. 
Burne-Jones, and other pictures besides. On 
the left lies the old dining-room, where visi- 
tors were permitted to smoke after the Pro- 
fessor had retired for the night; in front the 
passage leading to the large dining-room — 
specially constructed with a great number of 
windows for the sake of the view — on the walls 
of which hang those portraits of Ruskin by 
Northcote, to which reference will be made 
later on. Here also are the portraits of Rus- 
kin' s parents by the same artist, that of the 
father being incontestably the finer of the two ; 
and above the fireplace that splendid Titian, 
" A Doge of Venice," which played the promi- 
nent part of dumb witness in the trial of 
" Whistler versus Ruskin ; " and beside it a 
most interesting autographic portrait of Turner, 
duly inscribed sua manu and wrought, with all 
its delightful errors of draughtsmanship, when 
the artist was but sixteen years of age. 

Doubling sharply to the right after entering the 
street door is the drawing-room. Bookcases 
full of best editions of the best books — his 
own and others' — and displaying notable bind- 
ings, stand against the walls, Scott's novels and 
historical and critical works in quite a variety 
of sizes appearing to preponderate. Charac- 



PBHH 






! l^F ^ 






.Bp^' 






k^ %Bfar 






■BET* v^' 






Ik ' 




ivj^H 








1 







JOHN RUSKIN, 1877. 

FROM THE BUST BY BENJAMIN CRESWICK. 



(See p. 188.) 



BRANTWOOD. 133 

teristically enough, one edition of his works 
does not bear the surname upon their richly- 
bound backs, but "Sir Walter" only 3 suggest- 
ing the familiar reverence in which Ruskin 
held the author whose "every word," he in- 
sisted, should be included among the " Hun- 
dred Best Books." Exquisite examples of 
Prout's pencil drawings, of Burne-Jones ("Fair 
Rosamund"), and of Ruskin's own beautiful 
studies of the interior of St. Mark's at Venice 
— one of them, perhaps, the most important of 
all his artistic productions, together with his 
copy of Botticelli's "Zipporah" — adorn the 
walls as well. Cases of shells in infinite 
variety, of great rarity and equal beauty, and 
a few minerals of various formation reveal that 
other side of Ruskin's taste and knowledge 
which those forget who thought and talked of 
him only as an art-critic. On the mantelpiece 
are superb examples of cloisonne enamel, whose 
rich blue rivals the colour of the finest products 
of Nankin. And all around are books and 
ornaments which the connoisseur must seek 
out and appreciate for himself, for they are not 
displayed or thrust forward as is commonly 
the case in treasure-houses such as this. 
And they serve, perhaps, to emphasize the fact 
—so remarkable and striking at first — that the 
furniture throughout the house has no flavour 



134 JOHN RUSK IN 

— no taint, I should say — of "high art/' No 
particular attempt is made at artistic beauty : 
no spindle-legs make proclamation of " culture," 
nor Morris-paper of "aesthetics." The furni- 
ture, for the most part, belonged to Mr. Ruskin 
pere ; and, sound and solid as the day it was 
made, seeming to bear its date of "1817" 
carved on its face as the year of its creation. 

Beside the drawing-room — and, like it, over- 
looking the lake — is the study, where so many 
happy working hours of the Professor were 
passed. Here, about him, were many of his 
most loved possessions. Beside the doorway 
stands his great terrestrial globe ; above it, and 
flanking the door on either hand, several fine 
Turner water-colours. On the right, at the end 
of the room, is the fireplace, and above it a 
Madonna and Child, one of the most exquisite 
examples of the faience of Lucca della Robbia, 
" fashioned by the Master's own hand, and ab- 
solutely perfect," as Ruskin said the first time I 
saw it. Here, beside the hearth and next to the 
window, was the Professor's favourite corner. 
Here he would sit in his old-fashioned, high- 
backed chair, with a small table before him, on 
which he would have a couple of books or so, 
or his writing materials, and always glasses of 
flowers ; and from them he would ever and 
again raise his eyes and gaze wistfully or in ad- 



BRANTWOOD. 137 

miration over the lake or at the varying skies, 
which, as he once said, " I keep bottled like 
my father's sherries." Bookcases abound, and 
presses and cabinets. In the first low press 
stretching across the room is that wonderful 
collection of Turner drawings too precious to 
be allowed to hang upon the walls. Framed 
and hermetically sealed, they are slid upright 
into grooves as plates are slid into the rack by 
the scullery-maid. Further on is the writing- 
desk proper, and behind it that wonderful huge 
press that holds half the lions of Brantwood. 
Below are the mineral-cabinets. One series of 
drawers contains nothing but opals. Pulling 
out one in which lumps of stone, veined or 
plastered with large masses of dark-blue opal, 
" There ! " said the Professor, " never before, I 
verily believe, have such gigantic pieces of opal 
been seen — certainly not pieces that possess 
that lovely colour. I'm very strong in stones," 
he went on, "and this collection of agates is 
the finest in the kingdom/' In another series 
are the crystals, and in yet another rich speci- 
mens of gold in every condition in which it has 
been found ; and so forth and so forth through- 
out the whole extent of the great nest of 
drawers. 

Above is a collection, almost unmatched, of 
splendid books and manuscripts of all periods, 

12* 



138 JOHN RUSK IN. 

of special interest on their own account, and 
sometimes on that of previous possessors. The 
engrossed mss. of the tenth, twelfth, and thir- 
teenth centuries are of exceptional beauty. 
"I know of no stronger proof of the healthy 
condition of the Church at that time," said 
Ruskin, as he showed me the books with pride, 
fingering them with loving familiarity, yet some- 
times, I thought, with a sort of easy indifference, 
" than the evidence of these books, when they 
used to write their psalm-books so beautifully 
and play with their initial letters so freely and 
artistically. Of course, the faces in all such 
manuscripts are very badly drawn, because the 
illuminators were sculptors rather than artists, 
in our sense of the word." 

Transcending in interest all the more modern 
volumes are the original Scott manuscripts 
of several of the Waverley Novels — of "The 
Fortunes of Nigel," "The Black Dwarf," 
" Woodstock," " St. Ronan's Well," and "Pev- 
eril of the Peak." " I think," he said, taking 
down one of these well-cared-for volumes, 
" that the most precious of all is this. It is 
'Woodstock.' Scott was writing this book 
when the news of his ruin came upon him. 
He was about here, where I have opened it. 
Do you see the beautiful handwriting ? Now 
look, as I turn over the pages towards the end. 



BRANTWOOD. 139 

Is the writing one jot less beautiful ? Are there 
more erasures than before? That assuredly 
shows how a man can, and should, bear adver- 
sity." For these mss., as for the quintessence of 
Scott himself, Ruskin had the profoundest rever- 
ence and love, and he was ever on the watch to 
increase his collection. One occasion that did 
arise became a very sore recollection to him, for 
leaving an unrestricted, but presumably discre- 
tionary, limit with his friend and bookseller, 
Mr. F. S. Ellis, he was doomed to disappoint- 
ment as an ultra-fancy price was reached. 
" I've been speechless with indignation," he 
wrote to him, " since you let go that ' Guy 
Mannering' ms." And again, later on : "What 
on earth do you go missing chance after chance 
like that for ? I'd rather have lost a catch at 
cricket than that ' St. Ronan's.' . . . Seri- 
ously, my dear Ellis, I do want you to secure 
every Scott manuscript that comes into the 
market. Carte blanche as to price — I can trust 
your honour; and you may trust, believe me, 
my solvency." But the " St. Ronan's " was not 
lost for good, for in due time it became one 
of the five Scott mss. in the famous study at 
Brantwood. 

The first floor is ieached by a stairway 
parallel with the dining-room passage. Its walls 
are hung — as are most of the rooms and cor- 



140 JOHN RUSK IN. 

ridors— with pictures and drawings of great 
interest : a noble canvas, unfinished, by Tin- 
to ret, and drawings by Prout, Ruskin (one in 
particular yery Proutish), and others. Above 
the study is the guest-room, known as the 
" turret- room," with its Turners and its Prouts, 
and especially delightful for the look-out it 
affords round three points of the compass by 
day, and by night for the splendid view of the 
starlit sky. At the other end of the corridor is 
the room, situated over the drawing-room, of 
Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn, and between the 
two the bedroom occupied by the Professor. 
So small, so unassuming, one would say it was 
the least important in the house. In front of 
its single window, which lights it well, stands 
the low table ; on the left wall a bookcase with 
its precious volumes and missals — one of which, 
I believe, belonged to Sir Thomas More — and 
on the right the wash-hand-stand, the fireplace, 
and the little wooden bedstead. The last- 
named, with the doorway, occupies nearly the 
whole wall facing the window ; and the little 
room, as a whole, with its plain furniture and 
plainer chintz, seems rather the retreat of an 
anchorite than the sanctum sanctorum of the 
man whose taste was unsurpassed in England, 
and whose love of beauty and daintiness was 
keen and insatiable. But it is in the wonderful 



BRANTWOOU 143 

Turners which paper the room that its glory 
lies — drawings, every one a masterpiece, that 
so glow in their white mounts and frames of 
gold with all the colour and fancy and exquisite- 
ness of touch and the magic of distance, that 
they have long been famous in the land. 

" Look around at them," said Ruskin, with- 
out a shadow of the enthusiasm of the collector, 
but with the quiet confidence of the connois- 
seur, when he took me up for the first time to 
his bedroom to act the showman to his treas- 
ures. "There are twenty of Turner's most 
highly-finished water-colours, representing his 
whole career, from this one, when he was quite 
a boy, to that one, which he executed for me. 
There is not one of them which is not perfect 
in every respect. Now here is what is proba- 
bly the most beautiful painting that William 
Hunt ever did, and it hangs among the Turners 
like a brooch — with that drawing of my father's 
above it. I hold this to be the finest collection 
of perfect Turner drawings in existence, with 
perhaps a single exception." 

At right angles to the principal corridor runs 
another which leads to the newer portions of 
the house — to the rooms of the younger mem- 
bers of the family, to the schoolroom of the 
little ones, with its window built out for the 
view's sake, to Mr. Arthur Severn's large 



144 JOHN RUSKIN. 

studio and the greater play-room. Thence ac- 
cess most easily had to that lodge which Ruskin 
built in the grounds, " nearly as big as the 
house for a married servant," and which later 
contained Miss Severn's own little temple of 
ease. And about the whole place there is that 
air of prosperity and comfort and taste, though 
not of luxury nor display, which might be ex- 
pected in such a home — an air of peace, happi- 
ness, and bright contentment, of artistic and 
intellectual activity. 






CHAPTER XII. 

"THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE." 

To Ruskin's love of feminine society, and 
his profound respect and admiration for the 
sex, justice has already been done. But al- 
though he knew well many of the most distin- 
guished and accomplished women of the day, 
it was in his own home that Ruskin found the 
truest sympathy, the warmest affection, and, 
perhaps, the most efficient aid — in the person 
of his cousin and adopted daughter, Mrs. 
Arthur Severn. It was in 1864, a month 
after old Mr. Ruskin died, that that lady 
first shed her gentle light upon his house- 
hold, and soon became, what she ever con- 
tinued to be, his Angel in the House. How 
his mother yearned for companionship after 
her husband's death, and how she "provi- 
dentially " secured the affection and the society 
of her little kinswoman — Joan Agnew — Ruskin 
has himself told with equal simplicity and grace 
in that last chapter of " Praeterita" gratefully 
devoted to "Joanna's Care." "I had a notion 

she would be ' nice,' and saw at once that she 
g k 13 145 



146 JOHN RUSKIN. 

was entirely nice, both in my mother's way and 
mine ; being seventeen years old. And I very 
thankfully took her hand out of her uncle's and 
received her in trust, saying — I do not remem- 
ber just what. . ." And later he continues: 
" Nor virtually have she and I ever parted 
since. I do not care to count how long it is 
since her marriage to Arthur Severn, only I 
think her a great deal prettier now than I did 
then ; but other people thought her extremely 
pretty then, and I am certain that everybody 
felt the guileless and melodious sweetness of 
the face." And he goes on to describe how, 
"almost on our threshold," her first conquest 
was made, for Carlyle rode up the front garden 
and stayed the whole afternoon, and dined; 
and, later on, paid "some very pretty com- 
pliments" to the account of Miss Joan Ruskin 
Agnew. 

No memoir of Ruskin. however brief, can 
omit mention of the influence for good that 
Mrs. Severn exercised upon Ruskin's life. 
She had gone to stay with Mrs. Ruskin at 
Denmark Hill for seven days, while Ruskin 
went to Bradford — and stayed for seven years. 
And when her kinswoman died it was with one 
hand in hers, while the son held the other. 
Not only did she bring lightness into the house, 
and filled the character of Dame Durden as 



"THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE." 147 

delightfully and as satisfactorily as ever Miss 
Esther Summerson did for Mr. Jarndyce, but 
she helped the Professor in his mineralogical 
studies and arrangements. She led him — as he 
himself has admitted — to a fuller understanding 
of his beloved Scott and of Scottish genius ; and 
she widened his knowledge and appreciation of 
music. 

It was with great glee, and with full sense of 
paternal responsibility, that just two years after 
her arrival under his mother's roof Ruskin 
undertook to pilot Lady Trevelyan, her niece 
— Miss Constance Hilliard — and his own charge 
— Miss Agnew— for a voyage through Italy. 
" Constance Hilliard," wrote Ruskin — she be- 
came Mrs. W. H. Churchill later — " nine years 
old when I first saw her there, glittered about 
the place in an extremely quaint and witty way, 
and took to me a little, like her aunt. After- 
wards her mother and she . . . became 
important among my feminine friendships. ,, 
And so it fell out that Ruskin undertook to 
travel with them to Italy ; but the war between 
Prussia and Austria fell out, too, and the plans 
had to be radically altered. Concerning this 
journey and annotating it, are a number of 
Ruskin's letters to his private secretary which 
lie before me as I write ; and from them I 
quote some of the most interesting passages. 



148 JOHN RUSKIN. 

The tour had been carefully mapped out. The 
travellers left in the last week of April, 1866, 
and the first letter is as follows : — 

"Paris, 27th April, 1866. 
" We are getting on nicely. My address will be, Poste 
Restante, Vevay, Canton Vaud, Suisse. Send me as little 
as you possibly can. Tie up the knocker — say I'm sick — 
I'm dead. (Flattering and love-letters, please, in any 
attainable quantity. Nothing else.) Necessary business in 
your own words, if possible, shortly, as you would if I was 
really paralytic, or broken-ribbed, or anything else dread- 
ful. And after all explanation and abbreviation don't ex- 
pect any answer till I come back. But, in fact, I've a fair 
appetite for one dinner a day ; my cousin likes two, but I 
only carve at one of them. Tell Ned this. The Conti- 
nent is quite ghastly in unspeakable degradations and 
ill-omened ness of ignoble vice everywhere." 

Then Lady Trevelyan, the ill-fated com- 
panion of their journey, fell ill and detained 
them, first in Paris and again in Neufchatel, 
whence, on the 1 3th of May, there came : 

"I am entirely occupied to-day by the too probably 
mortal illness of one of the friends I am travelling with, 
but I may be yet more painfully so to-morrow. Please 
post enclosed, and say to everybody whom it may concern 
that that portrait of Mr. Mawkes is unquestionably Turner 
by himself, and, on the whole, the most interesting one I 
know. I gave Mr. Mawkes a letter to this effect six 
months ago, or more." 

Four days later Ruskin wrote the news of 
Lady Trevelyan's death, which, together with 




MRS. ARTHUR (JOAN RUSKIN) SEVERN. 

FROM THE PORTRAIT IN COLOURED CHALK BY JOSEPH SEVERN. 



"THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE." 151 

the war in Italy, would probably alter all his 
plans. Then a move was made to Thun ; and 
from the lake-side Ruskin wrote the following 

characteristic note : — 

"Thun, 21st May. 

"I've had a rather bad time of it at Neufchatel, what 
with Death and the North Wind — both Devil's inventions, 
as far as I can make out ; but things are looking a little 
better now, and I have had a lovely three hours' walk by 
the lake shore, in cloudless calm, from five to eight this 
morning, under hawthorn and chestnut — here just in full 
blossom, and among other pleasantnesses too good for 
mortals, as the North Wind and the rest of it are too bad. 
We don't deserve either such blessing or cursing, it seems 
to poor moth me." 

Interlaken was the next place of sojourn. 
On the 26th May Ruskin wrote : — 

"All you've done is right, except sending Mr. Henry 
Vaughan about his business. He is a great Turner man. 
Please write to him that he would be welcome to see any- 
thing of mine, but I would rather show them to him my- 
self. Also, don't take people to Denmark Hill, as it would 
make my mother nervous. I'm pretty well; my two 
ducklings all right." 

Four days later he writes from the same 
place : — 

"I have answered the Vice Chancellor, saying I'll come 
after the long vacation. If I ought to come before he 
must tell me by a line to Denmark Hill. . . I have 
had long letters to write to Lady Trevelyan's sister, and 
I'm much tired. Joan is well and Constance, and there's 
no one else in the inn just now, and the noise they make 



152 JOHN RUSK IN. 

in the passages is something — I was going to say ' unheard 
of/ but that's not quite the expression." 

Another letter from Interlaken, in which he 
says: "I am pretty well, much as usual; fresh 
air seems to do me little good, and foul little 
harm ;" and another from Meyringen announces 
the arrival of the party at Lucerne, whence he 
writes delightedly, on Friday, 22nd June: 

"That 'nice, quiet Miss Hilliard ' was dancing quad- 
rilles with an imaginary partner — (a pine branch I had 
brought in to teach her botany with !) — all round the 
breakfast table so long yesterday morning that I couldn't 
get my letters written, and am all behind to-day in conse- 
quence. . . I've got Georgie's letter. I'm too good- 
for-nothing to answer such divine things." 

Business communications followed from 
Schaffhausen and Berne, chiefly with regard 
to a certain wandering letter which was " start- 
ing in pursuit of me to Interlaken and thence- 
forward. It will catch me at Vevay at last, I 
believe, after making its own Swiss tour." And 
the writer continues : " I am sadly tired — dis- 
gusted with the war and all things. I have 
been very anxious about the two children since 
I was left alone with them, but it would have 
disappointed them too cruelly to bring them 
home at once." 

The 4th of July found Ruskin and "his 
ducklings" at Geneva, whence he wrote : — 







JOHN RUSKIN, 1880. 

FROM THE BUST BY SIR EDGAR BOEHM, BART., R.A. 

{See j>. /go.) 



"THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE." 155 

" My little daisy — Miss Hilliard — is wild to-day about 
jewellers' shops, but not so wild as to have no love to 
send you. So here you have it, and some from the other 
one, too, though she's rather worse than the little one, 
because of a new bracelet. They've been behaving pretty 
well lately, and only broke a chair nearly in two this 
morning running after each other." 

Returning by way of Interlaken, Mr. Ruskin 
and his wards came back to Denmark Hill, 
after an absence of about three months, while 
the great war was proceeding and preventing 
them from reaching Italy ; but the time, as may 
be seen in " Praeterita," was occupied by a 
journey of such delight that Mrs. Severn has 
declared that it was one of the most pleasurable 
memories of her youthful days. 

It was in 1870 that Miss Agnew was married 
to Mr. Arthur Severn, the eminent water-colour 
painter, and became the " Joan Ruskin Severn " 
whose name is so closely linked with that of 
the Professor as his most trusted friend and 
counsellor, and the cheerful companion and 
guardian of his age. He always rejoiced in 
her company, and when he chanced to be ab- 
sent for a brief time he would send her daily 
letters of cheery import ; and the delight with 
which he watched her family grow up around 
him (for he would not spare her even when she 
was married — especially when she was married) 
equalled the pleasure he found in the friend- 



156 JOHN RUSK IN. 

ship of her husband. But to the last, I think, 
he was always a little regretful that, although 
she had married the husband whom he wel- 
comed cordially as the companion best fitted 
for "his darling," he could not overbear the 
individuality of the artist to the point of making 
him in all respects a true disciple of the 
Ruskinian theory of painting. 



V 



CHAPTER XIII. 
HOME-LIFE AT CONISTON. 

But for the occasional access of illness in 
his later years, and the periodical intrusion of 
worrying attacks or harassing troubles — as the 
sound of battle murmurs from afar, though 
sometimes, too, of persecution nearer home — 
the life of Ruskin in his retreat at Coniston 
was one of sweet peace and luxurious quiet. 
He lived, in a measure, by rote, ordering his 
life carefully — both the time for work and the 
time for leisure. 

Never, indeed, was man more methodical in 
his work than Ruskin, nor more precise and 
regular in obedience to the rules he laid down 
for h ; s guidance. From first to last his work- 
ing hours were from seven in the morning till 
noon, and for no consideration would he ex- 
ceed his limit. Within those five daily hours 
all his work was produced — not only his books, 
but his business and private correspondence. 
Work in the afternoon was by himself for- 
bidden, unless it took the form of reading, and 
never under any circumstances, save in the ex- 
tremely exceptional case of an important note, 

14 157 



158 JOHN RUSK IN. 

would he write letters in the evening. On one 
occasion, at a time when he was busily engaged 
upon one of his books, he wrote to a gentleman 
who afterwards became his confidential secre- 
tary for ar time : 

"lam ashamed of myself when I look at the date of 
your letter, but it arrived when I was far from well and in 
a press of work, and as I had only to answer with sincere 
thanks — and I find my gratitude will always keep — I put 
off replying till I am ashamed to reply." 

And nine years later, in May, 1865, writing 
to the same person, who was now about to 
enter on his secretarial duties and occupy the 
position of friendship he afterwards forfeited, 
he wrote : — 

" I could not even read your letter last night. I was at 
dinner, and I never answer or read letters after ' business 
hours ' — I never see anybody — my best friends — but by 
pre-engagement. Ask the Rossetti's or anyone else who 
knows me. I can't do it, having my poor, little, weak 
head and body divided enough by my day's work. But do 
not the less think me — ever faithfully yours." 

Those only who saw Ruskin at home can 
claim properly to have known him. There 
within his own atrium was little sign of the 
dogmatism that characterised his appearance 
in the lecture-room, or the shyness that so 
often attended him in the drawing-room of 
society and touched his deportment with a sus- 



HOME-LIFE AT CONISTON. 159 

picion of gatickene. Writing of him in 1855, 
James Smetham said : " I wish I could re- 
produce a good impression of John for you, 
to give you the notion of his ' perfect gentle- 
ness and lowliness.' . . He is different at 
home from that which he is in a lecture be- 
fore a mixed audience, and there is a spiritual 
sweetness in the half-timid expression of his 
eyes." As he was in 1855 so he was in 1893: 
keen in respect to every subject which he dis- 
cussed, modest in respect to those in which he 
thought his interlocutor the better versed, and 
uncompromisingly emphatic when well upon 
his own ground. " Old Mrs. Ruskin," said 
Smetham, "puts 'John' down, and holds her 
own opinions, and flatly contradicts him ; and 
he receives all her opinions with a soft rever- 
ence and gentleness that is pleasant to wit- 
ness." And so he remained to the end — 
opinionated, undoubtedly, as he had a right 
to be, but gentle and considerate with his 
friends, as he had before been filially rever- 
ential to his mother. 

With his life at Denmark Hill, Ruskin made 
the world sufficiently acquainted in his writings. 
At Brantwood his life was necessarily of a 
more tranquil order, and, perhaps, more in 
accordance with the habits of a country squire. 
In weather that was "too fine and lovely to 



160 JOHN RUSK IN. 

think of rascals in," as he wrote to me once 
apropos of certain artistic troubles that were 
brewing in London, he would climb the hills 
or walk along the lake-side, wander over the 
moor or cut away the underwood ; or he 
would romp with Mrs. Severn's youngest 
children, or "play cricket" (more properly 
battledore and shuttlecock) with the elder 
ones. For "cricket," indeed, " Di Pa" (as he 
was fondly love-named) was in great request; 
but, in truth, he was no great hand at the 
sport, and his protest to Mr. Ellis that he 
would rather have missed a catch at cricket 
than that Scott manuscript must be taken 
rather as a bit of humorous self-criticism than 
as serious judgment of his powers at the game. 
He was a tireless walker, and almost to the 
last he would ramble for hours during the day, 
attended by his valet, Baxter, or leaning on 
Mrs. Severn's arm, when the weather per- 
mitted, and the keen air threatened him with 
neither neuralgia nor chilblains. 

Until the latter years of his life he loved 
to read Scott in the evening, and the family 
was expected to sit round and listen while 
he rendered one or other of the Waverley 
Novels with that completeness of realisation 
that few could equal. He would modify his 
voice for the various characters, and would 



HOME-LIFE AT CONISTON. 161 

revel in the Scottish accent, which he gave to 
perfection. As age began to tell upon him 
he would sometimes drop asleep for a moment 
or two in the middle of a chapter; but on 
awaking with a guilty start he would neverthe- 
less continue the appointed reading just as if 
nothing had happened. 

On the occasion of the visit to which I have 
before referred, the Scott-reading days were 
over. Ruskin no longer took his meals with 
the family, but alone in his study ; partly be- 
cause, in accordance with the doctor's mandate, 
he ate very slowly, and partly because he found 
that the lively interest he took in the conversa- 
tion had a deleterious effect upon his digestive 
processes. He would take an early breakfast 
in bed, comfortably propped by pillows and 
warmly wrapped in his dressing-gown, down 
the front of which his grey beard flowed with 
patriarchal dignity. He would then dress and 
descend to the study, when, after another break- 
fast, he would go out until a half-hour before 
luncheon time. Then, after resting for a time, 
he would sally forth again ; and, on returning, he 
would sit and think, or read. In the course of 
reading he would often annotate a book ; and I 
remember the amusement with which it was re- 
marked that an author's declaration of what he 
could " plainly see " had called forth a marginal 
/ 14* 






162 JOHN RUSKIN. 

note of " you owl ! " After dinner the Professor 
— or " Coz," as he was usually spoken of by Mrs. 
Severn in her own house — would come into the 
drawing-room and ensconce himself in his chair, 
with that *" back-cuddling " posture that was 
peculiar to him. Then, as he sipped at his cup 
of coffee, and afterwards at his glass of port, 
the chess-table was brought out, and the Pro- 
fessor and Mr. Arthur Severn, or the visitor, 
would settle down to a game. For, as it has been 
said, Ruskin passionately loved a game of chess. 
He had been a master of it, and played with 
great rapidity and considerable brilliancy. At 
one time he was a constant visitor to the Mas- 
kelyne and Cooke entertainment, where on at 
least one occasion he took a hand in the rubber 
with " Psycho ; " and whenever a new chess- 
playing automaton made a public appearance 
he would endeavour to try conclusions with it. 
Indeed, it was a matter of pride to him that he 
had obtained more than one victory over the 
famous player, " Mephisto," at the time when 
it was performing at the Crystal Palace with 
considerable eclat. 

Towards the end of his life he would rather 
listen than talk, and was readier to be amused 
than to amuse. Nevertheless he entered keenly 
into the subject of conversation, and his blue 
eyes flashed intelligence even when he preferred 



HOME-LIFE AT CONISTON. 163 

to maintain silence. Yet he would talk, and 
talk well, if the humour took him. Thus, on 
the last evening of my latest visit he was, I re- 
member well, more than usually conversational, 
and in his brightest humour. The subject of 
birds was mooted, and then he fell a-thinking. 
" Ah ! " he said, with his quaint-sounding r-less 
articulation, " I have made a great mistake. 
I have wasted my life with mineralogy, which 
has led to nothing. Had I devoted myself to 
birds, their life and plumage, I might have pro- 
duced something worth doing. If I could only 
have seen a humming-bird fly," he went on with 
a wistful smile, " it would have been an epoch 
in my life ! Just think what a happy life Mr. 
Gould's must have been — what a happy life ! 
Think what he saw and what he painted. I once 
painted with the utmost joy a complete drawing 
of a pheasant — complete with all its patterns, 
and the markings of every feather, in all its 
particulars and details accurate. It seems to me 
an entirely wonderful thing that the Greeks, 
after creating such a play as • The Birds,' never 
went further in the production of any scientific 
result. You remember that perfectly beautiful 
picture of Millais' — 'The Ornithologist' — the 
old man with his birds around him ? — one of the 
most pathetic pictures of modern times." And 
thus he talked on during the evening, on one 



164 JOHN RUSK IN. 

or other of his favourite subjects, until, at half- 
past ten, Mrs. Severn rose without a word and 
gently took his arm to escort him to his bed- 
room door. He submitted with a loving smile ; 
he gently -pressed his visitor's hand in both of 
his, and saying jocularly, " Good night, old 
'un," to Mr. Arthur Severn, and merrily, " Good 
night, piggy-wiggy," to one of the young 
ladies, the old man moved with genial dignity 
to the door and through it made a slow and 
stately exit. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 

It is not a little interesting to see what man- 
ner of man was he who had but to put his pen 
to paper to set the whole art-world by the ears ; 
he kindled our admiration for his literary ex- 
cellences even while amusing us by his originality 
and his quaintness, startling us with the bitter- 
ness of his scorn, with the heat of his eloquence, 
and the gall of his contempt and ridicule, tick- 
ling us with the delicacy of his banter, or some- 
times even with the error of his parti przs, and 
charming us with the wealth, beauty, and poetry 
of his diction. How did his appearance, ex- 
ternal and physical, impress him who had 
formed his own conception of the author seen 
through his own writings ? Truth to tell, the 
first sight was a little disappointing. It has 
often been said that with Lord John Russell, 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and many more, 
he shared the distinction of being one of the 
great little men of his day; but this is certainly 
not founded upon fact. Mrs. Arthur Severn's 

testimony on this point is conclusive. " I grant, 

165 



166 JOHN RUSKIN. 

alas ! " she wrote early in 1891, " that in the last 
ten years he has stooped so much that he has 
shrunk into what might be considered by some 
people a little man ; but about twenty-five years 
ago I should certainly have called him much 
above the average height. And as a young man 
he was well over five feet ten inches — indeed, 
almost five feet eleven ; and people who knew 
him then would have called him tall ! " This 
evidence, incontrovertible by itself, is yet con- 
firmed by Dr. Furnivall's preface to Mr. Mau- 
rice's little book. " Ruskin," he says, " was a tall 
slight fellow, whose piercing and frank blue eye 
lookt through you and drew you to him." Thus, 
though the slightness of his build reduced the 
weight of his figure to little more than ten stone 
of humanity, such was the brilliancy of the con- 
versationalist that nothing remained but a com- 
manding magnetic personality, the sweetness 
of whose merry, fascinating smile, and the viva- 
cious, deeply sympathetic expression of whose 
bright blue eyes removed at once all sense of 
size or comparative diminutiveness. 

It is, perhaps, to be deplored that the head 
and features of "the Professor" were not more 
often recorded than is the case. Mr. G. F. 
Watts, who has painted a prodigious number 
of the most eminent men of the day, never 
sought to execute a portrait of Ruskin — "it 




JOHN RUSKIN, 1882. 

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY BARRaUD. 



(See p. ibg.) 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 169 

would have been impossible for me to attempt 
it," said he, for " I should have felt paralysed in 
Ruskin's presence." Several artists of distinc- 
tion have set those features on canvas, moulded 
them in clay, and carved them in marble ; but 
it is rather through the photographer that they 
will live, with all the thousand and one changes 
of expression and humour that no painter or 
sculptor could hope to seize so as to give a 
complete representation of the man.* More- 
over, Ruskin had no special love for being 
reproduced : paradoxical as it may sound, his 
lack of vanity in respect to his own features 

* As late as 1887 Mr. Ruskin wrote to me that "no 
photograph gives any of the good in me," and he was 
himself more pleased with the accurate truth than with 
the obliging amiability of the camera. When the Queen 
asked Chalon, the miniaturist, if his beautiful art would 
not be killed by photography, then newly-invented, the 
Academician replied, with a complacent bow : " Madame, 
photography cannot flattere." This, in a measure, Ruskin 
felt too, and, I think, a little resented. But he was en- 
tirely pleased with Mr. Barraud's portraits of himself, which 
he declared were " the first done of him that expressed what 
good or character there was in him for his work. ' ' The plate 
of himself standing by a tree-trunk was taken when he was 
in one of his more frivolous moods. Young ladies and 
professional beauties, he said, were taken beneath palm- 
branches, or leaning gracefully against a tree, and for that 
playful reason he selected the pose — very awkward for a 
man of such natural grace of movement as he was — shown 
in the photograph reproduced on page 195. 

H 15 



170 JOHN RUSKIN. 

struck me once, when we were talking on this 
subject, as savouring not a little, but not un- 
pleasantly, of that very weakness. Yet, on the 
other hand, he certainly entertained no strong 
objection to sit for his portrait — an objection 
which in some men amounts to an absolute 
superstition. Isaac D'Israeli keenly observes 
in his "Curiosities of Literature": " Marville 
justly reprehends the fastidious feelings of 
those ingenious men who have resisted the 
solicitations of the artist to sit for their por- 
traits. In them it is sometimes as much pride, 
as it is vanity in those who are less difficult in 
this respect. Of Gray, Fielding, and Akenside 
we have no heads for which they sat; a cir- 
cumstance regretted by their admirers and 
by physiognomists." But here, by the way, 
D'Israeli was wrong, for Akenside did sit for 
his portrait to Pond in 1754, and it was 
engraved in mezzotint by Fisher in 1772. 

Certainly, Ruskin's father had no such preju- 
dices and scruples, and when his son was not 
more than three and a half years old he em- 
ployed James Northcote, R.A., to paint a por- 
trait of the child. This charming picture, the size 
of life, is well known by reputation to readers 
of " Fors Clavigera " and of the opening chapter 
of " Prseterita." Let Mr. Ruskin himself speak : 

"The portrait in question represents a 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSK IN. 171 

very pretty child with yellow hair, dressed 
in a white frock like a girl, with a broad 
light-blue sash and blue shoes to match ; the 
feet of the child wholesomely large in pro- 
portion to its body, and the shoes still more 
wholesomely large in proportion to the feet. 
These articles of my daily dress were all 
sent to the old painter for perfect realisation ; 
but they appear in the picture more remark- 
able than they were in my nursery, because 
I am represented as running in a field at 
the edge of a wood, with the trunks of its 
trees stripped across in the manner of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds ; while two rounded hills, as 
blue as my shoes, appear in the distance, which 
were put in by the painter at my own request, 
for I had already been once, if not twice, taken 
to Scotland, and my Scottish nurse having 
always sung to me as we approached the 
Tweed or Esk — 

' For Scotland, my darling, lies full in thy view, 
With her barefooted lasses, and mountains so blue,' 

the idea of distant hills was connected in my 
mind with approach to the extreme felicities 
of life, in my Scottish aunt's garden of goose- 
berry bushes, sloping to the Tay. But that, 
when old Mr. Northcote asked me (little 
thinking, I fancy, to get any answer so ex- 



172 JOHN RUSK IN, 

plicit) what I would like to have in the dis- 
tance of my picture, I should have said 'blue 
hills' instead of 'gooseberry bushes,' appears 
to me — and I think without morbid tendency to 
think overmuch of myself — a fact sufficiently 
curious, and not without promise in a child of 
that age." 

Of this picture there are two versions, the 
first the life-size portrait hanging in Brant- 
wood ; and the other an admirable reduced 
copy of it, at Mr. Arthur Severn's house at 
Heme Hill — the place which belonged at one 
time to the Professor's father, and which his 
own writings have endeared to all Ruskin- 
dom. How far this portrait is an accurate 
likeness it is impossible to say, but there is a 
manifest similarity between it and the pret- 
tily-conceived allegorical subject by the same 
artist which represents the child naked, with a 
faun or satyr — or, as Mr. Ruskin himself calls 
him, " a wild man of the woods " — extracting a 
thorn from the foot of the baby-shepherd. 
There is no missing the resemblance between 
the running child and the poor half-averted, 
panic-stricken, little face. This picture, Mr. 
Ruskin tells us, was painted at the special 
request of old Northcote, who had previously 
been so greatly charmed with the quaint repose 
and excellent sitting of the little model. 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 173 

Assuming that the first-named portrait gives 
a fair impression of the child, we see young 
John Ruskin the possessor of a fine intellectual 
head, quite exceptional in one so young, with 
singularly beautiful blue eyes, and a mouth of 
great sensibility. Playing happily in the green 
fields "among the lambs and the daisies," he 
reveals the same love of nature which has 
always been his strongest passion from first 
to last. We may safely take it that the like- 
ness is a good one, for the artist was one of 
the best portrait-painters of his day; and 
although he greatly affected history-painting, 
sacred as well as profane, portraiture was his 
speciality. By this time, however, Northcote 
was a man greatly advanced in years, of whom 
Charles Westmacott, in his " Pindaric Ode," 
issued in 1824, had written — 

" Northcote, the veteran, let me praise. 
For works of past and brighter days." 

His star was manifestly in the descendent, 
and only one of his works was afterwards 
publicly shown in Somerset House, where the 
Royal Academy then held its court. Yet 
Ruskin always thought well of the painter, 
although he has written so little about him in 
his works. Showing me the artist's portrait 
of Mr. Ruskin, senior, which hangs in the 



174 JOHN RUSK IN. 

dining-room at Brantwood, and which at once 
recalls something of Reynolds's " Banished 
Lord" to the memory of the beholder, the 
Professor expressed his gratification that his 
father " had the good taste and the good 
sense to have his portrait painted by so clever 
an artist." Neither of these portraits by 
Northcote was ever exhibited in the Royal 
Academy. 

We now come to the year 1842, when Mr. 
George Richmond, R.A., painted the full- 
length water-colour for Mr. Ruskin's father. 
At that time the young graduate was not yet 
famous. He had distinguished himself at Ox- 
ford; he had proved himself a born artist, by 
the charming drawings he had produced under 
the tutorship of Copley Fielding and J. D. 
Harding ; he had shown himself something of 
a poet — a "minor" one, at least — by the 
verses, instinct with feeling and imagination, 
which he had contributed to a magazine ; a 
scientist, by the manner in which he treated 
subjects, geological, mineralogical, meteorologi- 
cal, and other, as already recorded, in the pages 
of Loudon's Magazine of Natural History and 
other learned periodicals ; and an inventor, by 
his "cyanometer" — an instrument for meas- 
uring the depth of blue in the sky. He 
had fairly tested his keen critical faculty, as 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSK IN. 17 1, 

the author of the series of papers on the 
" Poetry of Architecture," and a work destined 
to be much enlarged in defence of Turner, 
who was fast becoming the butt of the igno- 
rant critics. But his great work — the book 
that was to bring him such immortality 
as he may enjoy — was as yet unpublished. 
The first volume of " Modern Painters," or, 
as he was within an ace of calling it, " Turner 
and the Ancients," was, indeed, not unwritten ; 
but it was not issued until the following year. 
And when the portrait was hung in the Royal 
Academy and catalogued " 1061, John Raskin, 
Esq.," there was none so wise as to correct it. 

For that portrait, which is reproduced 
through the kindness of Mr. Arthur Severn 
and of the artist, Mr. Richmond had plenty of 
opportunity for studying his sitter. His senior 
by ten years, Mr. Richmond was of the Ruskin 
family party which, with Mr. Joseph (otherwise 
" Keats's ") Severn, journeyed through France 
and Italy for the purpose of studying nature 
and aesthetics in the artistic Elysium of Europe. 
He shared his enthusiasm for art and encour- 
aged his aspirations ; and he was his com- 
panion on other expeditions, for which reason 
this first portrait of Ruskin as a man — he was 
now in his twenty- fourth year — has a peculiar 
interest. It is manifestly like him ; and his at- 



176 JOHN RUSK IN. 

titude as he turns from his desk, at which, may 
be, he had just been polishing his rounded 
periods in the proof-sheets of "Modern 
Painters," and was about to make some new 
drawing of the distant Alps, is thoroughly 
characteristic of the man. The mountain land- 
scape background, too, of which Mont Blanc is 
the principal feature, is what we might expect 
from the boy who asked for " boo hills." But 
the spectator cannot but be struck with sur- 
prise at his quite unusual tallness. This is a 
physical fact which we can hardly accept, tall 
though Ruskin undoubtedly was in his youth ; 
yet it may be that the natural slightness of the 
young author and a certain smallness of the 
furniture lent him a height which is misleading 
only through lack of proper comparison of pro- 
portion. As a work of art the portrait is in 
every way charming and interesting, and an ad- 
mirable example of the water-colour portraits 
with which Mr. Richmond — " dear George Rich- 
mond," as Ruskin calls him — was then building 
up his reputation. 

It shows us the Ruskin militant of those days 
— not yet steeped in the bitterness of contro- 
versy, but ready for the fray — good-humoured, 
sensitive, shrewd, and keen, turning his gentle 
and kindly face towards the friend who is paint- 
ing him. To judge by the shape of his head 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSK IN. 177 

and face, he already belongs to what phrenolo- 
gists and physiognomists would call the " eagle 
tribe " — the aquiline nose, as they would tell us, 
denoting sovereignty over men ; the projecting 
brows, perceptiveness with undoubted aesthetic 
tendencies ; and the chin, a considerable degree 
of reasoning power to direct his strongly-con- 
ceived opinions, yet with hardly a correspond- 
ing capacity for continuous logical deduction, 
Thus has his face been read by an accredited 
student of physiognomy. Yet with this version 
would the subject of it certainly have disagreed ; 
for Ruskin especially prided himself upon his 
power of logical deduction and analysis, and 
somewhere quotes Mazzini on him to the same 
effect. 

On these characteristics of face Sir John 
Everett Millais dwelt somewhat over-much in 
a chalk or pencil-drawing executed about this 
time, if we are to judge by the impression it 
made on those who saw it. Referring to this 
drawing, the late Mr. Woolner, R.A., wrote to 
me as follows : — " The Millais pencil-sketch was 
in the possession of Lady Trevelyan, wife of 
the late Sir Walter Trevelyan, of Wallington. 
The likeness, so far as I can remember, was 
very good, but the expression that of a hyena, 
or something between Carker and that hilarious 
animal. Enemies would call the expression 



178 JOHN RUSKIN. 

characteristic, but friends would declare that it 
did him injustice." Whether this portrait is 
the same as that by Sir John, now belonging to 
Mr. Severn, I cannot say. 

In 1853 Sir John Millais began his brilliant 
portrait of the now celebrated art-critic. Ruskin 
was known as the author of " Modern Painters/' 
he had published his " Seven Lamps of Archi- 
tecture," the " Stones of Venice," and other 
things, and had assumed the position of the 
champion of the cause of the Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood — a champion plus royaliste que le 
roi, more Pre-Raphaelite than the Pre-Raphael : 
ites, and with more impetuous enthusiasm in his 
own nervous brain and frame than in those 
of the whole other seven put together. This 
movement had for the last five years profoundly 
exercised the minds of the art-world, and no 
pen but Ruskin's could have fought its battle 
so fiercely, so powerfully, and so eloquently, 
nor with so great a measure of success. In 
acknowledgment of the yeoman's service he 
had rendered and was still rendering, Millais 
painted this portrait, which its possessor, Sir 
Henry Acland, of Oxford, has so courteously 
allowed me to reproduce. Both painter and 
sitter were in Scotland, whither the young 
author had gone to deliver his " Lectures on 
Architecture and Painting," and there, standing 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 179 

by the waterfall of Glenfinlas, Millais painted 
him, religiously abiding in the execution of the 
picture by all the tenets of the Pre-Raphaelite 
faith. Ruskin says somewhere that the English- 
man is content to have his portrait painted any 
way but praying, which was the chosen delight 
of the Venetian noble ; and similarly here, 
though not on his knees, but wrapped in loving 
reverence of nature, full of that spirit of hu- 
mility and reverential awe which all men feel 
at times, is the young preacher represented, as 
he stands bare-headed by the little cataract 
that rushes and dances down the " grey-white 
valley" to join the waters of Loch Lomond. 
With rare conscientiousness has Millais ren- 
dered every detail in the scene. The geologist 
can detect no flaw in the painting of the rocks, 
nor can the botanist find aught to carp at in 
the representation of lichen, plant, or flower, 
Detail was never more truthfully and accurately 
set on canvas than here in this small frame, 
measuring in all but eight-and-twenty inches 
by twenty-four, while In respect to technique 
the painter has rarely excelled the perfect 
execution of this work, which he completed 
in 1854, the year after his election into the 
Academy. 

Nor is the character of the figure at all 
unworthy of the still-life in this remarkable 



i8o JOHN RUSK IN. 

picture. The man is seen at a moment when 
his enthusiasm is lost in contemplation. The 
hair, always luxuriant, even to the last, is 
thrown back in somewhat heavy masses from 
his temples, and reveals once more, and, per- 
haps, more successfully than heretofore, the 
stamp of man he was. Drawn between profile 
and three-quarter face, the upper part of the 
head is perfectly rendered ; but the aquilinity 
of the nose is not sufficiently emphasized, nor 
is the full sensibility of the mouth made quite 
as much of as it deserves — and his mouth 
was one of his most remarkable features. In 
this connection a further extract from Mr. 
Woolner's private reminiscences of Ruskin's 
appearance may be appropriately quoted : — 

"As to Ruskin's mouth, it would be hard 
for anyone to read that feature. Rossetti told 
me that when a boy Ruskin had part of one of 
his lips bitten off by a dog. The mouth is the 
most expressive of all features, and tells the 
history of its owner's nature better than any 
other ; but under the circumstances how would 
it be possible to read it accurately ? To fill up 
the gaps in Sappho's verse would be but a 
schoolboy's exercise compared to such a task. 
Lavater might give a hint, or the Greek expert 
who discovered that Socrates was a sensual 
fellow, but I don't think any modern physiog- 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 181 

nomist could do much with this modern in- 
stance. Of course, the main force of his head 
is perception, this faculty being unusually de- 
veloped ; but, so far as I remember, I do not 
think there is anything else out of the common 
in the shape of it. His expression is varied 
beyond all example in my experience." 

Sanguineness and sweetness of tempera- 
ment, when not crossed, appear to have been 
his chief characteristics at that time. Writing 
to me about our friend, as he knew him in 
those early days, Mr. Holman Hunt has re- 
corded his interesting recollections as follows : — 

" When I first met him I was struck by his 
great slenderness of build, which was not yet 
without remarkable gracefulness of motion in 
quiet life. In manner, his persevering polite- 
ness and untiring pains to interest me and 
others in his possessions almost surprised me, 
and it would have been really unbearable to 
receive so much attention had he not shown 
so much pleasure in gratifying his guests. On 
further acquaintance he was quite capable of 
expressing the most extreme discontent that 
his friends would not adopt all his views. He 
was displeased with me for my determination 
to go to the East, and that I did not set 
myself to work to found a school. I was 
often amused at his ignoring the state of 

16 



182 JOHN RUSK IN. 

paralysis I was generally in from want of 
means. He would ask me why I did not go 
to Scotland for a few weeks or months for a 
holiday _when I appeared overworked ? and 
more than once he urged me not to delay 
leaving England for the purpose of seeing 
Italy — when in truth my purse would have 
been empty at Dover, and there would have 
been no means of making sure of a home 
had I returned on foot from the coast. It 
was quite strange to witness how this life- 
long experience of finding all things that he 
wanted at hand had made him, not incapable 
of talking of poverty, but without power of 
realising how straitness of means prevented 
a man from obeying the inclinations of his 
mind and body at every turn. Whatever 
feeling he professed towards one's purposes, 
I can say that I never found him anything 
but most gentle and tenderly affectionate, and 
although for some years circumstances made 
us unable to see one another much, I never 
had any reason to think him other than one 
of the truest men I had ever met as a noble 
friend." It is not uninteresting to seek for 
the traits set forth in Mr. Holman Hunt's 
generous testimony in the admirable synchro- 
nous portrait by Millais. 

Three years later, in 1857, Mr. Richmond 



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FROM THE BUST BY CONRAD DRESSLER. 



(£<?* /. 79J.) 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 185 

executed a head in chalk, also for Mr. Ruskin 
the elder, which is an excellent specimen of 
the artist's skill in this kind of portraiture. In 
this drawing, as in the water-colour, Mr. Rich- 
mond has preferred to show us the gentleness, 
thoughtfulness, and brilliance of the friend, 
rather than the vigour, the combativeness, and 
the earnestness of the crusader — characteristics 
which at the time were most impressed on 
the public mind. In both his charming works 
it is ''Ruskin at Home" whom the artist has 
recorded, not Ruskin the Teacher nor Ruskin 
the Missionary. This portrait, which hangs 
at Brantwood, and which was brilliantly 
engraved by Francis Holl, A.R.A. — Frank 
H oil's father — and issued in a reduced size in 
one of Mr. Allen's publications, was exhibited 
at the Royal Academy in the year it was made. 
Mrs. Severn tells me the following pretty cir- 
cumstance concerning this head : — " When the 
1857 portrait was done by dear, courteous Mr. 
Richmond, some friends thought it flattered 
Mr. Ruskin ; but Mr. Richmond said, ' No ; it 
is only the truth, lovingly told/ " 

A few years after Mr. George Richmond 
painted his large water-colour head of Professor 
Ruskin, Rossetti produced his portrait of his 
friend. It is a crayon drawing, not unlike those 

which he executed of other members of the Pre- 

16* 



1 86 JOHN RUSK IN. 

Raphaelite Brotherhood. It is simply executed 
in coloured chalks, of which the prevailing tint 
is red, and represents the young enthusiast in 
an attitude in which the artist often placed his 
sitters — nearly full-face and looking down. It 
is life-size, vignette in form, and belonged to the 
late Dr. Pocock, of Brighton ; it is now at Oxford. 

Nearly another decade elapsed before any 
portrait other than photographic was produced 
that I know of. Mr. Ruskin's water-colour 
portrait of himself, which is at Heme Hill, was 
painted in 1864, or perhaps a year later — a 
three-quarter view in pencil, lightly and skil- 
fully washed in ; this and another life-size head 
belong to Mrs. Arthur Severn. Ten years 
afterwards the Professor made two more auto- 
graphic efforts, one in pencil and the other in 
water-colour — both of which he presented to 
his American friend and fellow-traveller, Pro- 
fessor C. A. Norton. In 1875, or thereabouts, 
a clever modeller, by name Mr. Charles Ash- 
more, of Aston, a suburb of Birmingham, pro- 
duced a plaster medallion that is an excellent 
likeness of Ruskin's features ; but it fails to 
impart any vivacity to the face or to give any 
of the expression of intellectuality which was 
never absent from it. This work, however, 
probably took a photograph for its basis. 

The following year — that which saw his 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSK IN. 187 

re-election to the Slade Professorship in the 
University of Oxford — his features were cleverly 
caught by M. Georges Pilotelle, who chanced 
upon the Professor as he stood before Turner's 
" Python " in the National Gallery. The "light- 
ning artist" made a faithful sketch of the 
thoughtful face, and, re-drawing it in dry-point 
upon copper, he introduced it into the series of 
portraits of notabilities which he was then pro- 
ducing for Mr. Noseda, by whose permission it 
appears on page 1 1 1 of the present volume. 
It is not uninteresting to compare this head with 
that in the Millais picture painted two-and- 
twenty years before, and to see how little time 
has worked upon the living face, and how 
lightly it has dealt with the flowing locks. Here 
he is as we of the younger generation knew 
him, his favourite sky-blue stiff satin tie wound 
round his neck and falling in a bow in the 
familiar, double-breasted waistcoat, and match- 
ing the deep azure of his clear and fearless 
eyes. There is more indecision than might be 
expected about the lips, but that, I take it, is 
rather the fault of the etcher's needle than of 
the Professor's mouth. It may be observed 
that the hair is parted on the opposite side — a 
merely accidental representation, owing to the 
direct sketch upon the copper being reversed 
in the printing. 



188 JOHN RUSKIN. 

To the same period, or nearly so, belong 
two other portraits: the first, a miniature by 
Mr. Andrews, which was exhibited at the Royal 
Academy jn 1877, and which, being based upon 
a previously-produced likeness, need find no 
place here ; and the second, a water-colour 
drawing by Mr. Arthur Severn. This interest- 
ing little picture, painted in full-length, together 
with the chalk drawing by Millais, is in the 
hands of the painter, and I respect his wishes 
in reserving any description of it. 

Towards the close of the same year — Sep- 
tember, 1877 — Mr. Benjamin Creswick pro- 
duced his bust under circumstances of some 
interest. The sculptor was one of the many 
artists whose talent Mr. Ruskin " discovered " 
in his long life of beneficent watchfulness, and 
whose education he personally undertook, while 
charging himself with the cost of their worldly 
necessities. Mr. Creswick, in later years 
Lecturer to the Birmingham School of Art, 
sought to express his gratefulness for the 
generosity and interest of his patron — who, I 
understand, paid all expenses, not only for 
himself during four years, but also for his 
family (for he married young) and his aged 
parents — by modelling the bust in his tenderest 
mood, into which he aimed at throwing all the 
love and reverence he entertained for his bene- 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 189 

factor. Mr. Creswick's introduction to Ruskin 
was through the late Mr. Swan, when the late 
curator of the Ruskin Museum at Sheffield 
was on a visit to the Professor at Brantwood. 
"Whilst there," writes Mr. Creswick in refer- 
ence to this incident, "he induced him to 
give me a sitting for a bust. This was early 
in September, 1877. After the first sitting 
of an hour the Professor asked me how many 
more I should require. ' Five,' I replied. 
'After what I have seen of your work,' said 
he, ' I will give you as many as you want ' " — 
for Ruskin took a quite Pre-Raphaelite delight 
in watching for how long a time, and with 
how much patience, the sculptor would work 
at obtaining an expression which the briefest 
glance had enabled him to observe. The re- 
sult is a bust which has pleased those most 
concerned, Ruskin declaring it, while it was 
still in progress, as unsurpassed in modern 
sculpture except by Thorwaldsen ; while others 
regard it as being specially successful in real- 
ising one of the sitters most beautiful ex- 
pressions, and entirely characteristic of his 
animation when interested by sympathetic con- 
versation. The bust, which is in the Ruskin 
Museum at Meersbrook Park, Sheffield, repre 
sents the Professor in the gown of his degree. 
There is also distinctly indicated the slight 



190 JOHN RUSKIN. 

stoop, or bend, that his friends knew so well, 
which afterwards became so much accentuated. 
For my own part, judging from the photo- 
graph which Dr. Bendelack Hewetson has 
kindly taken for me, I cannot help thinking 
that, pleasing as it is in expression, the bust 
is neither striking as a likeness nor, to be 
frank, in point of vigour likely to occupy so 
high a position as a work of art, as others have 
freely declared. Yet, as I said before, it is a 
favourite work with some who are considered 
good judges and who certainly were well ac- 
quainted with the Professor. A duplicate of the 
bust is in the possession of Sir Henry Acland. 
The late Sir J. Edgar Boehm, R.A., modelled 
a bust of Ruskin for the Ruskin School in 
the University Galleries in 1880, and there it 
is now placed, carried out in marble upon a 
pedestal, in the centre of the large room. The 
portrait can hardly be considered a sympa- 
thetic one. Not that the sculptor was out of 
sympathy with his sitter — as the reader may 
judge by the words of the artist, who, writing 
to me a short while befoie his death on the 
subject of the work, said, " I never saw any 
face on which the character and the inside of 
the man were so clearly written. He can 
never have tried to dissimulate." How true 
this is will be felt by all Ruskin' s acquaint- 



THE PORTRAITS OF R US KIN. 191 

ance. Not only could he never have tried 
to dissimulate, but that man must have been 
hardened indeed who would try to dissimulate 
in his magnetic presence, for so fearlessly 
truthful was his look that the quiet gaze from 
the bright blue eyes must have been strangely 
disarming. What appears unsatisfactory about 
Sir Edgar's bust is a certain hardness of ex- 
pression about the mouth— an absence of those 
qualities which rarely failed to endear him at 
once to whomever entered into conversation 
with him. It is the scholar, the thinker, and 
the disputant, rather than the man, that Sir 
Edgar shows us. 

We now come to the large life-size por 
trait by Professor Hubert Herkomer, R.A. 
In this likeness, it seems to me, the artist 
has sought to place upon the face of his 
predecessor in the Slade Chair all the kind- 
liness which Sir Edgar Boehm omitted, all 
the cheery gentleness and old-world sweet- 
ness of disposition that distinguished him. 
The Boehm bust shows us something of a 
misanthrope ; the Herkomer portrait places 
before us the philanthropist, quiet, kindly, and 
self-possessed. The brow is, perhaps, a little 
too broad, and the projection of the eyebrows 
hardly enough insisted upon ; but the character 
of the nose and the quaint, expressive mouth 



192 JOHN RUSK IN. 

are perfectly rendered. This admirable por- 
trait is nominally a water-colour ; but that 
medium, strongly aided by body-colour, is 
reinforced with a pulpy substance, and resem- 
bles in method of execution the artist's well- 
known picture of " Grandfather's Pet." It was 
exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1881, 
and was etched by the painter in the same 
year, the plate being published for him by the 
Fine Art Society. 

The year 1884 saw a new portrait of "the 
Master." Being in London he visited Miss 
Kate Greenaway, and there sat to her for the 
commencement of a likeness which was never 
completed. It was there, doubtless, that his 
great admiration for her art sprang up, with 
the result with which we are all familiar — the 
Oxford lecture on " The Art of England," the 
illustrations in " Fors," and many a kindly 
reference of enthusiastic approval alike for the 
artist's dainty simplicity of style, and for her 
original beauty of draughtsmanship. But the 
portrait with which the year is to be credited 
was the pencil-drawing by Mr. Blake Wirg- 
man, subsequently published in the Graphic in 
April, 1 &&6. In consenting to sit, the Professor 
wrote to the lady who pleaded for Mr. Wirg- 
man : "I'll have this portrait different from any 
that have been yet — only I always fall asleep 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSKIN. 193 

in a quarter of an hour, so everything in the 
way of expression must be got, tell the artist, 
in ten minutes." Soon after this alarming 
notification the first sitting took place at Den- 
mark Hill, Ruskin pointing out the particular 
view the artist was to take ; and the second in 
Mr. Burne-Jones' studio. When the drawing 
was finished, and the background worked up 
from the study at Denmark Hill, Ruskin put 
a few finishing touches to it himself — touches 
having chiefly reference to the hair and eye- 
brows, about which he was very particular — 
and the work went off to the engraver, and has 
now found a resting-place in my own collection. 
Passing over as unauthentic and unofficial 
the portraits by Mr. Emptmeyer and Miss 
Webling, both exhibited at the Academy in 
1888, I arrive at the bust of, Mr. Conrad 
Dressier, executed by him in 1884, and ex- 
hibited at the New Gallery in 1889. This head, 
apart from its inherent merits as a work of art, 
is of special interest and value, as being the 
only one (so far as I know) which represents 
Mr. Ruskin with a beard, as he was known to 
his friends since 1881. As a likeness, I must 
admit that the engraving hardly does justice to 
Mr. Dressier' s work — the characteristic stoop, 
erect though bent, and the falling cheeks, the 

slightly hooked nose, the open, sensitive nos- 
1 » 17 



194 JOHN RUSKIN. 

trils, the pendant base of the septum, and the 
bony brows, do not appear as clearly in the en- 
graving as they should — the fault manifestly 
lying with the lighting of it in the photograph 
from which the block was cut. Speaking to me 
of this same bust, which he said was "better 
than Boehm's," Mr. Ruskin once said — with a 
strong touch of pathos, yet with a look of irre- 
sistible humour, " Ah ! it makes me look far 
more frantic than ever Fve been!" In point 
of fact, Ruskin was, as I began by saying, very 
tender as regards his personal appearance ; and 
I well remember his unfeigned pleasure when I 
told him upon one occasion that he certainly 
did not look his years. Readers of " Prae- 
terita " will remember the delightful story of 
" Little Rosie," when in 1858 Mr. Ruskin paid 
a visit to her mother : — " Rosie says never a 
word, but we continue to take stock of each 
other. 'I thought you so ugly/ she told me 
afterwards. She didn't quite mean that," the 
writer hastens to add ; " but only, her mother 
having talked so much of my ' greatness ' to 
her, she had expected me to be something like 
Garibaldi, or the Elgin Theseus, and was ex- 
tremely disappointed." And again he confided, 
with mock despondency, to the Lady of Thwaite 
how he had recently had his photograph taken ; 
that, although the likeness was good, he had 




JOHN RUSKIN, 1886. 

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY BARRAUD. 



(See p. ibq.) 



THE PORTRAITS OF RUSK IN. 197 

come out, as usual, as an ourang-outang. " I 
thought with my beard I was beginning to be 
just the least bit nice to look at. I would give 
up half my books for a new profile." 

Some years ago we were talking about his 
portraits, when he took occasion to tell me, in 
a sweeping sort of way, that he was dissatisfied 
with all that had been done of him, and the 
truer and the more candid they were the less he 
cared for them. "I like to be flattered, both 
by pen and pencil, so it is done prettily and in 
good taste," he said, with a candid smile, not at 
all ashamed of the little confession. It is, how- 
ever, in no sense discreditable to Mr. Dress- 
ier if he has not given just that touch of flattery 
— even conceding a lack of truth — of which the 
Professor admitted his fondness. 

"I cannot tell how many sittings we had/' 
wrote the sculptor, in a letter in which he de- 
scribed with glowing enthusiasm the fascination 
of his visit to the Professor in the spring of 
1884. "They took place in the out-house, a 
very convenient place for my purpose ; and I 
had as many as I wanted, some long and some 
short, as the humour served. I had, with the 
help of the old valet, made a little platform for 
the Professor to sit upon, and from this position 
he would watch me at my work for a couple of 
hours, sometimes talking the whole of the time, 

17* 



198 JOHN RUSK IN. 

. . . My deepest recollection of Professor Rus- 
kin is as he stood one evening after dinner 
(during which the conversation had been about 
his life and work, and had been more animated 
and touching than usual) at the open window 
overhanging the lake. The sun had gone down, 
and he wistfully looked over towards the Old 
Man of Coniston, behind which the sky was still 
aglow. He seemed to be mentally reviewing 
his life's work. His head was held up, although 
his body was slightly stooping, his right hand 
behind his back, and his left held on to the case- 
ment for support. I was deeply impressed with 
the expression of mystery in his face, and deter- 
mined to endeavour to reproduce it in my bust. 
I have failed in my ideal ; but that is what I tried." 
With that picture I close this chapter. The 
sun has indeed gone down behind the Grand 
Old Man of Coniston ; while the sky is still all 
aglow with the fire of his words and the gold 
of his beneficent acts. His portrait, his true 
portrait, does not exist — it could not exist — not 
until the artist's hand can picture in paint or 
mould in clay the ever-varying, never-ending 
expression and the thousand moods, change- 
able but always honest, uncertain in temper but 
always good and kind and tender and righteous, 
that go to make up the face so lovingly remem- 
bered by his friends as that of John Ruskin. 



\s 



CHAPTER XV. 

"THE BLACK ARTS: A REVERIE IN THE 
STRAND." 

BY JOHN RUSKIN. 

[Note. — In the autumn of 1887 Ruskin was 
in London, staying, as usual, at Morley's Hotel, 
Trafalgar Square, whence a two minutes' walk 
would carry him into the National Gallery. 
His window overlooked the gallery " where the 
Turners are," he said markedly ; but not caring 
for the light, he sat with his back towards it, 
drawing himself up into one side of it, with his 
knees and feet together in his characteristic atti- 
tude. The Editorship of the Magazine of Art had 
just been confided to me, and my announce- 
ment of it seemed to awaken his sympathetic 
enthusiasm. He clapped his hands and cried, 
" Bravo ! I'm so glad. You have a great 
opportunity now for good," and immediately 
proposed to contribute an article to its pages. 
It was agreed that the paper in question should 
appear in the January number, and that it 
should be followed by at least one other. 
Then he went off to Sandgate to recuperate, 

whence he wrote : " I find the landlord and his 

199 



2oo JOHN RUSK IN. 

wife so nice and the rooms so comfortable that 
I've settled down (so far as I know) till Christ- 
mas. But please don't tell anybody where I 
am." And a few days later : " When do you 
want your bit of 'pleasant' writing? Did I 
say it would be pleasant? I have no confi- 
dence in that prospect. What I meant was 
that it wouldn't be deliberately ^pleasant ; 
and I will further promise it shall not be tech- 
nical. But I fear it will be done mostly in gri- 
saillet. I don't feel up to putting any sparkle 
in — nor colour neither." " For one thing," he 
wrote on another occasion — for he had now 
grown quite enthusiastic over the magazine, 
and was offering a good deal of very accepta- 
ble advice, " I shall strongly urge the publica- 
tion of continuous series of things, good or 
bad. Half the dulness of all art books is their 
being really like specimen advertisement books, 
instead of complete accounts of anything." 
Then followed the announcement: "I have fin- 
ished the introductory paper; six leaves like 
this, written as close. It will, perhaps, be 
shorter than you wished in print, but you will 
see it chats about a good many things, and I 
couldn't tack on the principal one to the tail of 
them ; so that you had better begin your Janu- 
ary number with Watts' more serious paper. 
Then came the article, but with no title to it ; 



si ' iux^ IfS 



l^UVA. 



£_ VLpjuMJlM^- *-"* ~^ ^ 



" THE BLACK ARTSr 203 

and as the press was waiting a telegram was 
despatched to him to supply the omission. The 
characteristic reply came : " I never compose 
by telegram, but call it ' The Black Arts,' if you 
like." A subsequent letter of confirmation 
supplied as a substitute " A Reverie in the 
Strand " ; and, while protesting against the 
telegram, which " always makes me think some- 
body's dead," he replied to a question of mine 
as to the amount owing to him for the article: 
u You are indebted to me a penny a line ; no 
more and no less. Of course, counted two- 
pence through the double columns." Subse- 
quent letters, as well as previous ones, contain 
further counsel and criticisms in respect to the 
Magazine of Art, and details of arrangement 
concerning the articles which were to follow 
the first — chiefly bearing on " body-colour 
Turners," as a contrast to the introductory 
matter, and on "pure composition, as far as I 
can without being tiresome ; and there will be 
something about skies and trees, and I'll under- 
take that the drawings I send shall be repre- 
sentable, and not cost much in representing." 
But a period of indisposition followed, in which 
to his correspondence was appended the vale- 
dictory, " And I'm ever your cross old J. R. ; " 
and a subsequent journey and return to Brant- 
wood, with another spell of illness, made him 



204 JOHN RUSK IN. 

seek for a spell of complete rest, upon which 
it would have been cruel to break in. And so 
his intended series of papers remained incom- 
plete, and " The Black Arts " remains as much 
a fragment of an intended whole as " Proser- 
pina," " Love's Meinie," "Deucalion," "The 
Laws ot Fesole," "Our Fathers Have Told 
Us," and even u Praeterita" itself.] 



It must be three or four years now* since 
I was in London, Christmas in the North coun- 
try passing scarcely noted, with a white frost 
and a little bell-ringing, and I don't know Lon- 
don any more, nor where I am in it — except 
the Strand. In which, walking up and down 
the other day, and meditating over its wonder- 
ful displays of etchings and engravings and 
photographs, all done to perfection such as I 
had never thought possible in my younger days, 
it became an extremely searching and trouble- 
some question with me what was to come of all 
this literally "black art," and how it was to in- 
fluence the people of our great cities. For the 
first force of it — clearly in that field everyone 
is doing his sable best: there is no scamped 
photography nor careless etching; and for 
second force, there is a quantity of living char- 

* October, 1887. 






IMs 







fix HZ^ - J u^^-5 




" THE BLACK ARTS." 207 

acter in our big towns, especially in their girls, 
who have an energetic and business-like " know- 
all-about-it " kind of prettiness which is widely 
independent of colour, and which, with the 
parallel business characters, engineering and 
financial, of the city squiredom, can be vividly 
set forth by the photograph and the schools of 
painting developed out of it ; then for the third 
force, there is the tourist curiosity and the sci- 
entific naturalism, which go round the world 
fetching big scenery home for us that we never 
had dreamed of: cliffs that look like the world 
split in two, and cataracts that look as if they 
fell from the moon, besides all kinds of anti- 
quarian and architectural facts, which twenty 
lives could never have learned in the olden 
time. What is it all to come to? Are our 
lives in this kingdom of darkness to be indeed 
twenty times as wise and long as they were in 
the light ? 

The answer — what answer was possible to 
me — came chiefly in the form of fatigue, and a 
sorrowful longing for an old Prout washed in 
with Vandyke brown and British ink, or even a 
Harding forest scene with all the foliage done 
in zigzag. 

And, indeed, for one thing, all this labour 
and realistic finishing makes us lose sight of 
the charm of easily-suggestive lines — nay, of 



208 JOHN RUSK IN. 

the power of lines, properly so called, alto- 
gether. 

There is a little book, and a very precious 
and pretty one, of Dr. John Brown's, called 
" Something about a Well." It has a yellow 
paper cover, and on the cover a careful wood- 
cut from one of the Doctor's own pen-sketches ; 
two wire-haired terriers begging, and carrying 
an old hat between them. 

There is certainly not more than five minutes' 
work, if that, in the original sketch; but the 
quantity of dog-life in those two beasts — the 
hill-weather that they have roughed through to- 
gether, the wild fidelity of their wistful hearts, 
the pitiful, irresistible mendicancy of their eyes 
and paws — fills me with new wonder and love 
every time the little book falls out of any of the 
cherished heaps in my study. 

No one has pleaded more for finish than I in 
past time, or oftener, or perhaps so strongly 
asserted the first principle of Leonardo, that a 
good picture should look like a mirror of the 
thing itself. But now that everybody can mir- 
ror the thing itself — at least the black and white 
of it — as easily as he takes his hat off, and then 
engrave the photograph, and steel the copper, 
and print piles and piles of the thing by steam, 
all as good as the first half-dozen proofs used 
to be, I begin to wish for a little less to look at, 



^"W vv 



£>J2^\. ukdliu^u^^ 









" THE BLACK ARTS." 211 

and would, for my own part, gladly exchange 
my tricks of stippling and tinting for the good 
Doctor's gift of drawing two wire-haired ter- 
riers with a wink. 

And truly, putting all likings for old fashions 
out of the way, it remains certain that in a given 
time and with simple means, a man of imagina- 
tive power can do more, and express more, and 
excite the fancy of the spectator more, by frank 
outline than by completed work ; and that as- 
suredly there ought to be in all our national art 
schools an outline class trained to express them- 
selves vigorously and accurately in that man- 
ner. Were there no other reason for such les- 
soning, it is a sufficient one that there are 
modes of genius which become richly produc- 
tive in that restricted manner ; and yet by no 
training could be raised into the excellence of 
painting. Neither Bewick nor Cruikshank in 
England, nor Retsch, nor Ludwig Richter, in 
Germany, could ever have become painters ; 
their countrymen owe more to their unassuming 
instinct of invention than to the most exalted 
efforts of their historical schools. 

But it must be noted, in passing, that the 
practice of outline in England, and I suppose 
partly in continental academies also, has been 
both disgraced and arrested by the endeavour 
to elevate it into the rendering of ideal and 



212 JOHN RUSKIN. 

heroic form, especially to the delineation of 
groups of statuary. Neither flesh nor sculp- 
tured marble can be outlined ; and the en- 
deavour, to illustrate classical art and historical 
essays on it, by outlines of sculpture and archi- 
tecture, has done the double harm of making 
outline common and dull, and preventing the 
public from learning that the merit of sculp- 
ture is in its surfaces, not its outlines. The 
essential value of outline is in its power of sug- 
gesting quantity, intricacy, and character, in 
accessory detail, and in the richly-ornamented 
treatment which can be carried over large 
spaces which in a finished painting must be 
lost in shade. 

But I have said in many places before now, 
though never with enough insistence, that 
schools of outline ought to be associated with 
the elementary practice of those entering on 
the study of colour. Long before the patience 
or observation of children are capable of draw- 
ing in light and shade, they can appreciate the 
gaiety, and are refreshed by the interest of 
colour ; and a very young child can be taught 
to wash it flatly, and confine it duly within limits. 
A little lady of nine years old coloured my 
whole volume of Guillim's heraldry for me 
without one transgression or blot ; and there is 
no question but that the habit of even and ac- 



" THE BLACK ARTS." 213 

curately limited tinting is the proper foundation 
of noble water-colour art. 

In the original plan of " Modern Painters," 
under the head of " Ideas of Relation," I had 
planned an exact inquiry into the effects of 
colour-masses in juxtaposition ; but found when 
I entered on it that there were no existing 
data in the note-books of painters from which 
any first principles could be deduced ; and that 
the analysis of their unexplained work was far 
beyond my own power, the rather that the 
persons among my friends who had most 
definitely the gift of colour-arrangement were 
always least able to give any account of their 
own skill. 

But, in its connection with the harmonies of 
music, the subject of the relations of pure 
colour is one of deep scientific and — I am sorry 
to use the alarming word, but there is no other 
— metaphysical interest ; and without debate, 
the proper way of approaching it would be to 
give any young person of evident colour- faculty 
a series of interesting outline subjects, to colour 
with a limited number of determined tints, and 
to watch with them the pleasantness, or dul- 
ness — a discord of the arrangements which, ac- 
cording to the nature of the subjects, might be 
induced in the colours. 

It is to be further observed that although 



214 JOHN RUSKIN. 

the skill now directed to the art of chromo- 
Jithotint has achieved wonders in that mecha- 
nism, the perfection of illustrated work must 
always be jn woodcut or engraving coloured by 
hand. No stamped tint of water-colour can 
ever perfectly give the gradation to the sharp 
edge left by a well-laid touch of the pencil. 
And there can be no question (it has so long 
been my habit to assert things — at all events 
very questionable in the terms I choose for 
them — in mere love of provocation, that now in 
my subdued state of age and infirmity I take 
refuge, as often as possible, in the Unquestion- 
able) that great advantage might be gained in 
the geography classes of primary schools by 
a system of bright color adapted to dissected 
maps. In the aforesaid condition of age and 
infirmity which I sometimes find it very difficult 
to amuse, I have been greatly helped by get- 
ting hold of a dissected map or two — four, to 
be accurate — Europe, France, England, and 
Scotland, and find it extremely instructive 
(though I am by way of knowing as much 
geography as most people) to put them to- 
gether out of chance-thrown heaps, when I am 
good for nothing else. I begin, for instance, 
in consequence of this exercise, to have some 
notion where Wiltshire is, and Montgomery- 
shire ; and where the departments of Haute 



" THE BLACK ARTS." 215 

Loire and Haute Garonne are in France, and 
whereabouts St. Petersburg is, in Russia. But 
the chief profit and pleasure of the business to 
me is in colouring the bits of counties for my- 
self, to my own fancy, with nice, creamy body- 
colour, which covers up all the names, leaves 
nothing but the shape to guess the county by 
(or colour when once determined), and opens 
the most entertaining debates of which will be 
the prettiest grouping of colours on the con- 
dition of each being perfectly isolated. 

By this means, also, some unchangeable facts 
about each district may at once be taught, far 
more valuable than the reticulation of roads 
and rails with which all maps are now, as a. 
matter of course, encumbered, and with which 
a child at its dissected map period has nothing 
to do. Thus, generally reserving purple for 
the primitive rock districts, scarlet for the vol 
canic, green for meadow-land, and yellow for 
corn-fields, one can still get in the warm or cold 
hues of each colour variety enough to separate 
districts politically — if not geologically distinct ; 
one can keep a dismal grey for the coal coun- 
tries, a darker green for woodland — the forests 
of Sherwood and Arden, for instance — and 
then giving rich gold to the ecclesiastical and 
royal domains, and painting the lakes and rivers 
with ultra-marine, the map becomes a gay and 



216 JOHN RUSKIN. 

pleasant bit of kaleidoscopic iridescence with- 
out any question of colour-harmonies. But for 
the sake of these, by a good composer in varie- 
gation, the geological facts might be ignored, 
and fixing first on long-confirmed political ones, 
as, for instance, on the blanche-rose colour and 
damask-rose for York and Lancaster, and the 
gold for Wells, Durham, Winchester, and Can- 
terbury, the other colours might be placed as 
their musical relations required, and lessons of 
their harmonic nature and power, such as could 
in no other so simple method be enforced, 
made at once convincing and delightful. 

I need not say, of course, that in manuscript 
illumination and in painted glass, lessons of 
that kind are constant, and of the deepest 
interest ; but in manuscript the intricacy of 
design, and in glass the inherent quality of the 
material, are so great a part of the matter that 
the abstract relations of colour cannot be ob- 
served in their simplicity. I intended in the 
conclusion of this letter to proceed into some 
inquiry as to the powers of chromolithotint ; 
but the subject is completely distinct from that 
of colouring by hand, and I have been so much 
shaken in my former doubts of the capability 
of the process by the wonderful facsimiles of 
Turner vignettes, lately executed by Mr. Long, 
from the collection in the subterranean domain 



" THE BLACK ARTS." 217 

of the National Gallery, that I must ask per- 
mission for farther study of these results before 
venturing on any debate of their probable range 
in the future. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

EPILOGUE. 

There is little for me to add to this essay. I 
have purposely refrained from enlarging on 
Ruskin's many-sided character and achieve- 
ments, lest the size of the book should be car- 
ried far beyond the appointed limits. But I 
have, I think, done enough to direct the atten- 
tion of the reader to many of the chief — the 
most important or the most amusing — of Rus- 
kin's views, and to awaken a desire in some to 
study the works of one of the most original 
thinkers and most interesting writers of the day. 
Opinions may vary as to the practicability of 
his synthetic philosophy, and as to the sound- 
ness of what he held to be the basis and root- 
foundation of all true art. He may have 
regarded art too much as a moralist and too 
little as a technician ; he may have raised cer- 
tain individual workers too high in the compara- 
tive scale of art, so that the fall from off 
their perches has been inevitable. To all such 
errors and more a great reformer is liable, 

who single-handed, fierce and determined, and 
218 



EPILOGUE. 219 

in face of all opposition, has sought to lift the 
art of his country into a mighty power for 
good, and to raise her conscience at the same 
time to a level of purity and morality. But 
whatever be the fate of his teaching, whatever 
the destiny of his artistic fame, he will always 
be numbered among the mighty ones of the 
pen ; one of the greatest, best, and kindest 
creatures who ever fought the people's fight of 
righteousness and truth. 



xa 



INDEX. 



Acland, Sir Henry, 21 

Agates, Ruskin's collection of, 137 

Agnew, Miss, see Mrs. Arthur 

Severn 
Albany, Duke of, 58 
Anderson, Miss Mary, 56 
Andrews, Mr., Miniature of Rus- 

kin by, 188 
Aratra Pentelici, 67 
Architectural Magazine, Contri- 
butions to the, 21 
Architecture and Painting, Rus- 

kin lectures on, 178 
Architecture, Ruskin's views on,26 
Arrows of the Chace, 105 
Art and Architecture, Papers on, 21 
Art Books, Dulness of, 200 
Art of England, Lecture on the, 

192 
Art, Ruskin's views of, 74, 84 
Artist, Ruskin as, 73 et sea. 
Ashmore, Charles, Plaster Medal- 
lion of Ruskin, 186 
Author, Bookman, and Stylist, 
Ruskin as, 67 et sea. 

Barraud's Portrait of Ruskin, 169 
Barrett, Wilson, 43 
Bedroom, Ruskin's, 140 
Beever, Miss Susannah, 49, 107 
Bewick, Ruskin's criticism of, 123 
Birds, Ruskin's love of, 163 
Bishop of Carlisle, Ruskin's friend- 
ship with the, 42 
Bishop of Manchester, Discussion 

with the, 42 
Bishops, Ruskin on, 42 
Boehm, Sir J. Edgar, R.A., Bust 

of Ruskin by, 190 
Bonheur, Madame Rosa, on Rus- 
kin, 74 



Books, Collection of, 130, 137 

Bookselling Trade, Disagreements 
with the, 69 

Botticelli, 87, 133 

Brantwood, 125 el sea.; Acquisi- 
tion of, 129; Description of, 
129 et sea. ; Daily life at, 159 

Brown, Dr. John, 208 

British Museum, Ruskin arranges 
Silicas, 37 

Buckland, Dr., Influence on Rus- 
kin, 21, 100 

Burne- Jones, Drawings by, 130 

Byron, Influence on Ruskin, 71, 
109 



Carlyle and Ruskin, 31, 71, 99; 
visits Brantwood, 146 

Carpaccio, 87 

Character, Health, and Tempera- 
ment of Ruskin, 40 et sea. 

Characteristics, Main, of Ruskin's 
mind, 41 

Charity, Ruskin's, 47, 50 et sea., 

55» 93 

Chesneau, E., 46 

Chess, Ruskin as a player of, 57, 
162 

Children, Ruskin's love for, 49; 
Education of, 92, 212 

Churchill, Mrs. W. H., 44; trav- 
els with Ruskin, 147 

Claudian, Ruskin on, 56 

Cook, E. T., 70, 80 

Cornhill Magazine, Contributions 
to, 30, 31 

Creswick, Benjamin, Bust of Rus- 
kin by, 188 

Critic, Ruskin on the, 104 

Crown of Wild Olive % 31 
19* 221 



222 



INDEX. 



Cruikshank, George, Ruskin's 
dealings with and views on, 
115 et seq. 

Cycling, Ruskin's dislike of, 90 

Daily Telegraph, 104 

Dale, Canon, as Ruskin's tutor, 18 

Dame Wiggins of Lee, 116 

Darwin visits Brantwood, 102; 
Ruskin's views upon his the- 
ory, 46, 1 01 

Death, Ruskin's horror of, 57 

Degree, Ruskin receives B.A., 
22; LL.D., 31 

Discount, Ruskin objects to sys- 
tem of, 69 

Disraeli and Ruskin, 96 

Dixon, Thomas, 106 

Drama, Criticism on the Modern, 

5 6 

Draughtsman, Ruskin as, 75 

Dressier, Conrad, Bust of Ruskin 
by, 193 ; Impressions of Rus- 
kin, 197 

Dyce, W., Advice to Ruskin of, 29 

Eagle's Nest, 68 

Education, Ruskin's views on, 92 

et seq., 212 
Elements of Drawing, 68, 106 
Ethics of the Dust, 96 

Fielding, Copley, Ruskin's early 

teacher, 18, 75 
Forbes, James, teaches geology to 

Ruskin, 100 
Fors Clavigera, 32, 106 
Frondes Agrestes, 107 
Funerals, Ruskin's horror of, 58 

Generosity of Ruskin, 37, 48 et 

seq. t 50, 93 
Geography, Suggestions for im- 
proved teaching of, 214 
Geology, Ruskin's study and love 

of, 21, 100 
Glacier des Bossons, Chamouni, 75 
Gladstone, Mr., and Ruskin, 96, 99 
Goodwin, Dr. Harvey, Ruskin's 
friendship for, 42 



Gordon, Rev. Osborne, influence 
on Ruskin, 22 

Graphic, Portrait of Ruskin pub- 
lished in, 192 

Greenaway, Miss Kate, Portrait ot 
Ruskin begun by, 192; ad- 
miration of Ruskin for the 
art of, 192 

Grimm, Plates of Cruikshank for, 
116 

Hamerton, P. G., on Ruskin, 25 

Harding, J. D., Ruskin's early 
teacher, 18, 75 

Harrison, W. H., Influence on 
Ruskin of, 22 

Health, Ruskin's, and its influ- 
ence, 40 et seq. 

Herkomer, Prof. Hubert, R.A., 
Portrait of Ruskin by, 191 

Hill, Miss Octavia, and Ruskin, 33 

Hilliard, Miss, see Mrs. Churchill 

History of Christian Art, 26 

Hogarth, Ruskin on, 123 

Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, Let- 
ter to, 109 

Holl, Francis, A.R.A., Engraving 
of Ruskin by, 185 

Home life at Coniston, 157 et 
seq. 

Hortus Inclusus, 46 

Hunt,W. Holman, 26, 76, 143, 181 

Illness, Attacks of, 38, 60 
Illustrated work, Perfection of, 214 
Italy, Ruskin's trips to, 25, 147 

Journalistic correspondence of 
Ruskin, 103 

Lang, Andrew, 88 
Leeds Mercury, 104 
Letter-writer, Ruskin as, 1 03 et seq. 
Letters, Private, 107 
Life of Ruskin, 17 et seq. 
Linton, W. J., owned Brantwood, 

126 
Literary Gazette, The, 104 
Long, W., Chromo-lithotints by, 

216 
Luini, 87 



INDEX. 



223 



Magazine of Art, Ruskin con- 
tributes to, 199 et seq. 
Magazine of Natural History, 21 
Manchester City News, 104 
Manchester Examiner and Times, 

104 
Manuscript illumination, 216 
Mathematics, Ruskin 's dislike of, 

101 
Maurice, Rev. F. D., 31 
Millais, Sir John Everett, R.A., 
26; Portrait of Ruskin by, 
178 
Mineral Collection, Ruskin's, 137 
Mineralogist, Ruskin as, 137 
Modern Painters, Publication o f , 
22; Ruskin's valuation of, 
67, 213 
Monetary Gazette, The, 104 
Morning Post, The, 104 
Morris, William, on Ruskin, 91 
Muscle versus Machinery, 89 

Northcote, James, R.A., Portraits 
of Ruskin, 130, 170; Rus- 
kin's esteem for, 173 

Norton, Professor C. A., Gift of 
Portrait to, 186 

Outline, Value of, 21 1 

Oxford, Ruskin enters Christ- 
church, 21 ; endows Taylor- 
ian Galleries, 37; Lectures, 
68 

Pall Mall Gazette, 104 

Palmerston and Ruskin, 96 

Paris, Ruskin in, 148 

Philosophy, Ruskin's early, 83 

Picture, Ruskin's summary of a 
good, 208 

Pilotelle, Georges, sketch of 
Ruskin, 187 

Poems, Publication of Ruskin's, 
109 

Poet, Ruskin as, 109 et seq. 

Poetry of Architecture, 21 

Political Economy, Ruskin's the- 
ory of, 96 

Politician, Ruskin as, 99 



Portraits of Ruskin, 165 et seq ; 
Barraud, 169; James North- 
cote, R.A., 170; George 
Richmond, R.A., 174, 182; 
Sir John Everett Millais,R.A., 
177 ; Engraved by Francis 
Holl, A.R.A., 185; Rossetti, 
185; by himself, 186; Mod- 
elled by Charles Ashmore, 
186; Georges Pilotelle, 187; 
Andrews, 188; Arthur Sev- 
ern, 188; Benjamin Creswick, 
188; Modelled by Sir J. 
Edgar Boehm, R.A., 190; 
Professor Hubert Herkomer, 
R.A., 191 ; Miss Kate Green- 
away, 192; T. Blake Wirg- 
man, 192; Modelled by Con- 
rad Dressier, 193 

Prceterita, 113, 194 

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Rus- 
kin and the, 26, 29, 178 

Press, Attitude of, towards Rus- 
kin, 70 

Prout, Esteem of Ruskin for, 76 ; 
Drawings of, 133 

Quarterly Review, Ruskin con- 
tributes to the, 26; attacks 
Ruskin, 8^ 

Railways, Ruskin's hatred of, 89 

Reader, The, 104 

Religious opinions of Ruskin, 102 

Richmond, George, R.A., Por- 
traits of Ruskin, 174, 182; 
travels with Ruskin, 175 

Roberts, David, Ruskin's ameni- 
ties with, 76 

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 29 ; Por- 
trait of Ruskin by, 185 

Rossetti, W. M., 26 

Rouen Cathedral Spire, Drawing 
of, 76 

Ruskin, John, birth of, 17; his 
love of scenery and art de- 
veloped, 18; first painting 
lessons of, 18; first appear- 
ance in public press, 21 ; en- 
ters Christ church,Oxford, 21 ; 



224 



INDEX. 



gains Newdigate Prize, 22; 
graduates B.A., 22 ; publishes 
Modern Painters, 22; cen- 
tral event of his life, 22; 
founds a school of painting, 
26; wages war against ex- 
isting commercial morality, 
30 ; elected Rede Lecturer at 
Cambridge, 31 ; appointed 
Professor of Fine Art at Ox- 
ford, 32 ; begins Fors Clavi- 
gera, 32 ; gifts to public in- 
stitutions, 37 ; first attacked 
by illness, 38; resigns Slade 
Professorship, 38 ; rupture 
with Oxford University, 39; 
retires from personal contact 
with public, 39; as a chess 
player, 57, 162; critic of his 
own works, 68, 72; theories 
of art, 74, 211 ; deplores the 
decadence of art, 87; ac- 
quires the art of crossing- 
sweeping, 88 ; the apotheosis 
of the navvy, 88; a theistic 
philosopher, 91 ; as politician, 
99 ; as geologist, 100 ; corre- 
spondent of the public jour- 
nals, 103; intended for the 
Church, 109; facility in verse- 
making, 109; travels. abroad, 
*47> x 75; methodical ways, 
157; dailylife, 157,159, 161; 
a tireless walker, 160; as in- 
ventor, 1 74 ; portrait of him- 
self, 186 ; dissatisfied with all 
his portraits, 197 ; enjoys 
judiciously applied flattery, 
197; amused by dissected 
maps, 214 

Ruskin, John, Senior, Portrait of, 
1 73 ; death of, 32 

Ruskin, Mrs., 32, 135 

Ruskin Societies of the Rose 
founded, 34 

Salsette and Elephanta, 22 
Sandys, Frederick, 30 
School Board, Ruskin 's views on 
the, 92 



Scotland, Ruskin in, 178 

Scotsman, The, 104 

Scott, Sir Walter, no; Ruskin's 
admiration of, 133 ; original 
manuscripts of, 138; read 
aloud by Ruskin, 160 

Sesame and Lilies, 31 

Seven Lamps of Architecture, 26, 
68 

Severn, Arthur, R.I., Portrait of 
Ruskin by, 188 

Severn, Mrs. Arthur, 44, 145, 147, 

155 

Shells, Ruskin's collection of, 133 
Smetham, James, Letters to, 106 ; 
description of Ruskin by, 159 
Slade Professor, Ruskin appointed 
in 1870, 32; re-elected in 
1876,38; resigned in 1879,32 
Stature of Ruskin, 166 
Stephens, Frederick G., 26 
St. George's Guild established, 33 
St. George's Museum at Walkley 
established, 37 ; transferred 
to Meersbrook Park, 38 
St. Mark's Venice, Ruskin's stud- 
ies of, 133 
Stones of Venice, 68 
Study at Brantwood, 134 
Stylist, Ruskin as, 67 et sea. 
Switzerland, Ruskin in, 151 

Taylorian Galleries at Oxford, 

Gifts to, 37 
Teacher, Ruskin as, 80 
Thackeray, Editor of Cornhill, 31 
Theatre, Ruskin's love for the, 55 
The Angel in the House, 145 et sea. 
Time and Tide by Weare and 

Tyne, 96, 106 
Times, Ruskin's celebrated letter 

to the, 29, 103 
Tintoret, 87 
Trevelyan, Lady, travels abroad 

with Ruskin, 147 ; her death, 

148 
Turner, Ruskin's defence of, 22, 

87; Ruskin's admiration of, 

76; portrait of, 130; draw 

ings by, 137 



INDEX. 



225 



Tynda.ll, Professor, Ruskin on, 
101, 115 

Ugliness, Ruskin 's condemnation 

of, 123 
Unto this Last, 30 

Vol D'Arno, 68 

Venice, 26, 68 

Verse-making, Ruskin 's facility 

in, 109 
View of things, Ruskin's, 96 et 

seq. 
Vivisection, Ruskin opposed to, 39 



Waldstein, Dr., on Ruskin, 91 

Watts, G. F., R.A., and Ruskin, 
166 

Waverley Novels, Manuscripts of 
the, 138 

Whistler, Ruskin's criticism on, 
and subsequent trial, 33 

Wirgman, T. Blake, Portrait of 
Ruskin by, 192 

Women, Ruskin's sentiments to- 
wards, 43 

Woolner, T., R.A., 29, 177, 180 

Working Men's College, Rus- 
kin's interest in the, 31 



